Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Tuesday, April 18. Tax Day. I'm Nyla

Boudouf. Today, AI-generated tax scams. Plus, what the Bud Light Controversy says about

America today. But first, our one big thing. Politics over the debt ceiling heats up.

Let me be clear, defaulting on our debt is not an option. But Nyla there is a future of higher

taxes, higher interest rates, more dependency on China, an economy that doesn't work for working

Americans.

Let's speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, at the New York Stock Exchange yesterday. McCarthy

pledged to pass legislation to raise the debt ceiling. All of this comes as budget politics

are heating up on Capitol Hill. Axios is Matt Phillips is here to help us understand what's

going on here. Hey, Matt. Hey there. Matt, first, remind us what's at stake here.

So the debt ceiling has to be raised at some point over the next few months. We don't know exactly

when. We've already passed the statuary debt limit, meaning the Treasury Department is now doing

all sorts of what they call extraordinary measures to continue paying the bills. But the government,

at some point, will run out of that capacity. And the Congress, they're going to have to

raise the debt ceiling or risk us defaulting on the debt, which would be a really remarkable

situation. And no one quite knows what that would do to the economy or financial markets. So

it's a big gamble. What's the status of negotiations between Democrats and Republicans right now?

Well, they're sort of playing out in public. As we saw yesterday, the House Speaker,

Kevin McCarthy came to Wall Street and delivered this speech where he pledged to raise the debt ceiling,

but he said we would have to cap spending growth at about 1% a year and roll back some spending

to 2022 levels that Democrats came out and said these are not real plans. The House hasn't even produced

a budget tax that we could use to begin negotiations. So this is all sort of atmospheric,

...