The election could make Washington’s looming next fiscal crisis harder

Washington’s next fiscal crisis looms right around the corner. Fixing it could be hard.

Analysts project the U.S. will breach the $41.1 trillion debt ceiling at some point in 2027, requiring Congress to raise or suspend it before the Treasury Department runs out of “extraordinary measures” to avoid a catastrophic default. If Democrats capture one or both chambers of Congress in November’s midterm election, it would open the door to a standoff as the party tries to extract policy wins from Republican President Donald Trump in exchange for averting a bumpy ride over the fiscal cliff.

Trump last week also proposed a $5,000 dividend for every American if Republicans win the midterms — a move that could bring the U.S. to the debt ceiling faster.

And while some Republicans have proposed raising the debt ceiling this year to preempt potential brinksmanship next year — possibly during the lame-duck legislative session immediately after the election — some in the GOP are already disavowing such a move without deep spending cuts as the national debt balloons past $40 trillion, a record high.

“There are already discussions like if we lose the midterms, it would probably need to happen in the lame duck,” said Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo. “Because I don’t think that the president wants to have a pound of flesh extracted by the Democrats.” Burlison has proposed a constitutional amendment to require the U.S. government balance its budget and has called for capping future federal borrowing.

Burlison, however, also said that “a blanket raise is not going to get my vote.”

“If you’re a fiscal conservative, we should be using every opportunity that we can to reduce the deficit anytime we have a vote to raise the debt ceiling,” he said.

Other conservative lawmakers agreed, citing recent rises in Treasury yields as a reason to cut spending and not approve blanket approvals of more borrowing.

“Not without massive spending restraint and reforms,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, when asked by CNBC if he would support raising the debt ceiling before the end of the year.

“If we’re going to sit down and do the debt ceiling or sit down and talk about anything tax-related, then we’re going to have to be real about spending restraint, so we’ll see,” Roy said.

That leaves Republican leaders Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., between a rock and a hard place. Johnson has a razor-thin margin in the House…