A day after meeting with top congressional leaders, President Joe Biden headed to New York’s Hudson Valley to make the case for a clean debt limit increase on the home turf of one of the 18 Republicans representing districts the Democratic president carried in 2020.
Biden spoke in Valhalla, N.Y., at the southern tip of the district of first-term Rep. Mike Lawler, who holds a Hudson Valley seat that is a prime pickup opportunity for Democrats in 2024. Lawler is No. 5 on CQ Roll Call’s most recent list of the 10 most vulnerable House incumbents, which is led by a fellow New Yorker, Rep. George Santos, who was taken into federal custody Wednesday after being indicted on 13 counts of alleged corruption and related offenses.
Lawler was in the audience at Biden’s event at Westchester Community College, which featured the president blasting the recent House-passed bill that Lawler supported pairing a slew of spending controls with a debt limit increase.
