Sunday shows preview: Senate votes to raise debt ceiling; Facebook whistleblower blasts company during testimony

A short-term debt ceiling increase approved in the Senate and blistering testimony by a Facebook whistleblower against her former employer are expected to dominate this Sunday’s show circuit.

Last month, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers in a letter that the United States appeared to be on course to default on its debt in October “once all available measures and cash on hand are fully exhausted.” In her letter, she said that since Aug, 1, “extraordinary measures” were being taken to prevent the country from defaulting on its debt, noting that those would run out in the fall. 

Yellen warned congressional leaders they should not wait until the last minute to increase or suspend the debt limit, arguing that it “can cause serious harm to business and consumer confidence, raise short-term borrowing costs for taxpayers, and negatively impact the credit rating of the United States.”

Those warnings were followed up again toward the end of September again, when Yellen said that the country could risk defaulting on its debt if no congressional action was taken before Oct. 18.

Tensions over how lawmakers were going to raise the debt ceiling led to a stalemate between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

Originally, the GOP pushed for Senate Democrats to pass a long-term debt hike on their own through the budget reconciliation process, a move that would allow them to bypass the 60-vote legislative filibuster. 

However, McConnell and Schumer came to an agreement earlier this week in which the GOP would agree to expedite the reconciliation process if Democrats agreed to raise the debt ceiling through the process on their own. 

Eleven Republican senators voted with Democrats to get the bill over a procedural hurdle that required 60 votes. The measure ultimately passed later that day in a 50-48 vote along party lines. 

According to estimates from the Treasury Department, the debt ceiling would be extended into early December after increasing it by $480 billion.

Yellen is scheduled to appear on ABC’s “This Week.”

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen blasted her former employer during a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing, arguing that it failed to adequately police its own content and claimed that the social media company was “understaffed” to address issues.

The hearing followed a series of bombshell reports by The Wall Street Journal, which included company documents Haugen leaked to the news outlet. The report alleged that Facebook knew that Instagram was harming younger users; claimed that the company did not adequately address coronavirus misinformation and did not do enough to stop drug cartels and human traffickers who were using its site.

Haugen argued that Facebook should be held accountable for its mistakes.

“Facebook should not get a free pass on choices it makes to prioritize growth and virality and reactiveness over public safety. They shouldn’t get a free pass on that because they’re paying for their profits right now with our safety,” she said on Tuesday.

“Thank you so much Ms. Haugen, for shedding a light on how Facebook time and time again has put profit over people. When their own research found that more than 13 percent of teen girls say that Instagram made their thoughts of suicide worse, what did they do? They proposed Instagram for kids,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said during the hearing. 

Those allegations were refuted by Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, and by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg after the hearing.

In a blog post in September following the publication of The Wall Street Journal, Clegg claimed that the investigations “contained deliberate mischaracterizations of what we are trying to do, and conferred egregiously false motives to Facebook’s leadership and employees.”

“At the heart of this series is an allegation that is just plain false: that Facebook conducts research and then systematically and willfully ignores it if the findings are inconvenient for the company,” Clegg wrote.

Clegg is scheduled to be on ABC’s “This Week,” NBC’s “Meet The Press” and CNN’s “State of the Union.” Klobuchar is scheduled to be on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Below are the full list of guests scheduled to appear on this week’s Sunday talk shows:

ABC’s “This Week” — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen; Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs.

NBC’s “Meet the Press” — Clegg; Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.); former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.

CBS’ “Face the Nation” — Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.); Fiona Hill, former National Security Council senior director for European and Russian affairs; Mary C. Daly, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner.

CNN’s “State of the Union” — Clegg; Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.); Terry McAuliffe, Democratic nominee for governor in Virginia.

“Fox News Sunday” — Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.); Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.)

Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” — Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Republican Conference Chairman, Senate; Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Minority Leader; John Ratcliffe, Former Director of National Intelligence; Candace Owens, Author, “Blackout”