Public confessions of Ashley Biden during her run for the 2020 presidential election: From police reform to mental health to life as a White woman with White privilege
First daughter Ashley Biden has been a regular presence in President Joe Biden’s White House – she quit her job before the 2020 campaign partly to be near the man she calls her “best friend” – but until this fall, she stayed carefully behind the scenes.
Now the normally private social worker, 41, is suddenly doing public appearances and making very personal statements, talking about everything from police reform and mental health to life as “a White woman with White privilege.” Hunter is a long-term drug user who is now in recovery.
But Biden is making it clear she’s ready to tell her own story, no small matter for a person whose personal diary was once stolen and peddled for sale to her father’s political detractors.
I feel like I know my worth, I know my family and they have given up their lives for the American people, so I finally feel like that is a place where I know who I am.
The public confessions come at a moment important for Ashley Biden, whose father and mother, Dr. Jill Biden, continue to weigh a reelection run in a country that remains roiled by political division. The gloves-off campaign style of the last several years has not gone unnoticed by Ashley Biden.
“I have to be honest with you, I started to really have a lot of resentment,” said Biden last week in Washington. It is cruel and it is dehumanizing. And so, I have a lot of anger around that.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/politics/ashley-biden-white-house/index.html
Hunter Biden, the Bidens and the White House: Why Do You Think he is impeached Donald Trump? How Does she look at her?
On October 24, Biden joined her parents at the White House for a reception to celebrate the Indian holiday Diwali, standing beside the first lady as she made remarks. The Bidens wore green and peach saris, with the former in a printed dress and the latter in a three piece sari.
But she is not a ubiquitous West Wing presence like her presidential first daughter predecessor, nor is she consistent tabloid fodder, like her older brother, Hunter Biden.
One person who has worked for the Bidens says that she has had periods of being more vocal. “But she has also had times of being almost reclusive, and not participating.”
Federal prosecutors are weighing possible charges for Hunter Biden related to tax violations, as well as for making a false statement related to a gun purchase, CNN has previously reported.
“They’re not going to find anything,” she said at the Q&A last week, talking about Hunter Biden, and the investigation. She chuckled and said that they were just try to do whatever they could, but when people starting to attack her, she was very surprised. It has become a common thing.
Ashley Biden said the brouhaha over the Hunter Biden allegations of wrongdoing and influence peddling has become little more than a family inside joke. “I still look at my brother and I’m like, ‘do you know you impeached Donald Trump, basically?’”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/politics/ashley-biden-white-house/index.html
She’s not going anywhere, but she’s going out to help people who aren’t coming out of incarceration: An interview with Ashley Biden
“Growing up, I lived a very normal, down-to-earth life,” she said last week. She was an athlete, excelling at both field hockey and lacrosse during her Wilmington, Delaware, school years.
She took an interest in her father’s grassroots-style of politicking, often accompanying him at campaign events, parades and on the door-to-door visits that were once a hallmark of gathering votes.
I would always question the inequity when I travel with him. During his interview with K QED in San Francisco, Biden said that he learned about racism from a young age. I wanted to tackle structural violence and institutional racism. People aren’t healing. Why are the people who are least hurt the least healed?
Biden said this month that she is now a consultant with the National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers, which helps victims of traumatic events and teaches and assists building centers around the country. Biden recently said she is also “teaching a trauma class for 25 women who are coming out of incarceration.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/politics/ashley-biden-white-house/index.html
The Livelihood Project: a socially conscious nonprofit organization that promotes social justice and minority entrepreneurship in the U.S.
Biden launched a hooded sweatshirt line called “Livelihood” and marketed it as socially conscious. Biden stated that profits from the hoodies went to charity in support of social justice and minority entrepreneurship.
She had been scheduled to travel on two foreign trips with the first lady – in May, to Romania, Slovakia and Ukraine, and Ecuador, Panama and Costa Rica – but pulled out of the trips last-minute. The East Wing cited Covid-19 issues as the reason for the cancellation of both of the events.
Biden says that during last year’s presidential campaign, she and her brother were a frequent target of opponents who made fun of them.
With the upcoming midterms less than a week away, it remains unclear if her father will run a second time for president.
She said that her father is dedicated during a public radio interview. “We’re going to have some real issues if we don’t win the House and Senate. I mean, it’s over, right? The thing is done in the sense of what comes next. Our rights. Mental health care. All of it.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/03/politics/ashley-biden-white-house/index.html
The Collapse of the McConnell-McCoynell Spending Package: Biden’s “Quiet Moments” on the Dais in Washington
Biden’s answers to a few questions on the dais in Washington sounded almost like he was a politician.
I think we can achieve the same results, but we have a different way of doing it. She said that she is not saying that we cannot scream from the mountaintops of injustice, but that we have to work with the other side.
After McConnell declared on Tuesday that the deal in the works wasBroadly appealing, McCarthy told House Republicans that he had no position on the spending package. Top congressional negotiators announced Tuesday evening that an agreement has been reached for a framework that should allow lawmakers to complete a sweeping full-year government funding package.
CNN’s Raju and Melanie Zanona reported Tuesday that McCarthy had signaled at the White House meeting that he’d be open to a large bill. But while Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell worked on such a measure Tuesday and declared it “broadly appealing,” McCarthy told his members that he was a “Hell no” on the measure.
And now as Congress is wrapping up its work for the year to fund federal agencies through next fall, McCarthy and McConnell are headed on a collision course, underscoring the competing political forces in their respective conferences that the two will have to work through next year when the GOP takes power in the House.
Senate Minority Whip John Thune, the South Dakota Republican who is McConnell’s top deputy, told me that it is a House-Senate dynamic.
McCarthy said that the continuing resolutions to fund the government are not where he wants to be. The California Republican warned that a short-term patch might be necessary if Democrats don’t want to work with the Republicans, but he also said they can get it done in January.
Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is far from assured of winning sufficient support in his party to become House speaker next month. But even before the vote, his authority is already weakening by the day – in a way that could make him a speaker who is in office but not in power.
Indeed, the debt limit is poised to be breached sometime next year, and already a major battle is shaping up to raise it, even as McConnell has long found circuitous ways to avert default. Senate Republicans want to finish this year’s funding package in the final days of the current Congress held by Democrats, which would eliminate a major battle over a government shutdown early next year.
Not all of those ultra-conservatives blocking McCarthy are making outlandish demands. Some, for instance, are demanding fuller debates, a return to regular order in committees and more power for individual members. McCarthy still has a problem with the more extreme lawmakers even though he can deal with this group.
“We’re on defense,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters. We are dealing with the cards we were dealt. The Democrats want to raise money for other domestic programs but they were able to keep the line against that.
But as McCarthy struggles to shore up support for his speaker’s bid, he is facing immense pressure from his right flank to take a harder line on a number of policy issues, including on the spending package. The House GOP will be in charge for the new year and so the hardliners want to wait to fund the government until that time.
Even as McCarthy signals his staunch opposition to the massive spending package, some of his critics are complaining about how the process is playing out.
The head of the House Freedom Caucus said that Senate leader McConnell was about to roll the House on trillions of dollars in spending. “Tell me how something changes here. I’m interested to hear, but right now, I don’t see anything changing.”
House GOP leadership is formally whipping against the one-week short-term spending patch to extend this Friday’s deadline until December 23, and Republican sources believe leaders will likely whip against the omnibus bill as well. McConnell is likely to support one of the packages.
The Tea Party of Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy: Replacing the Speaker for the Future of the California Republican House of Representatives
McCarthy is becoming the latest example of a political leader consumed by a revolution the “Make America Great Again” radicals helped to stage. For the radical lawmakers now blocking his ascent to his dream job, he’s become the political establishment he once condemned.
Congressional tension has been a feature of our Constitutional republic. Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are going to be fine.
McCarthy has negotiated behind closed doors over chamber rules that his detractors want to weaken the speakership, including allowing an individual member to call for a vote to oust the speaker. The California Republican has resisted that.
It was not clear if Mr. Trump helped out Mr. McCarthy or just worked on his own. The former president has spoken with Eli Crane, an incoming Republican congressman from Arizona, and Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina, among others. The seven current and incoming Republican lawmakers, including Mr. Crane and Mr. Norman, signed a letter demanding that the leaders of the next congress make it easier to remove the speaker.
When Nancy Pelosi found herself short of the votes she needed to become speaker, she quickly picked off defectors and cut deals to get the votes she needed. Ms. Pelosi, renowned for her ability to arm-twist and coax, won seven votes by agreeing to limit her tenure, picked up another eight by promising to implement rules aimed at fostering more bipartisan legislating, and won over her sole would-be challenger by creating a subcommittee chairmanship for her.
The California Republican has made a number of pledges to appease the right flank of his party. He traveled to the southern border and called on Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, to resign or face potential impeachment proceedings. He promised Ms. Greene, who was stripped of her committee assignments for making a series of violent and conspiratorial social media posts before she was elected, a plum spot on the Oversight Committee.
He has threatened to investigate the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, promising to hold public hearings scrutinizing the security breakdowns that occurred. He has been talking toultraconservative lawmakers in an attempt to win them over. He publicly encouraged his members to vote against the spending bill, which is needed to fund the government.
The steps McCarthy is taking to try to secure the speakership – and the future complications that may entail – were evident on Tuesday when he gave Greene, the Georgia Republican, a pass for her latest effort to mock the trauma of the Capitol insurrection. Over the weekend the congresswoman said the riot would have been a success if she had been in charge on January 6, 2021. She later insisted she was being sarcastic after the White House complained her comments were a “slap in the face” to law enforcement and against fundamental US values.
Republicans won the control of the House with a free and fair election. But their far smaller-than-expected majority is offering extra leverage to the kind of pro-Trump extremists many voters appeared to reject in last year’s midterms.
McCarthy was trying to get the glory of the speaker’s gavel, regardless of cost, as he was locked in discussions with hardliners on more concessions. It was unlikely he would create a political foundation that would promote stable governance given the extreme forces rocking the GOP and the intricigence of the Gaetz-Boebert chaos caucus.
The California Republican is fighting a rearguard battle against members who want to make it easier to eject a sitting speaker and he’s appeasing ex-President Donald Trump’s extremism and that of acolytes like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to save a narrow political power base propping up his dream of running the House.
This is one reason why the current year-end tussle over whether to fund the government for a full year – a bipartisan framework agreement for which was announced Tuesday night – or for just a few months is so critical since it could dump a fiscal crisis on the lap of a weak and easily manipulated new speaker next month.
GOP governance addressed some of the problems that voters will be interested in. But while he has announced he will form a select committee to examine China’s growing threat, which could unite both parties, most of McCarthy’s recent rhetoric has focused on a relentless set of investigations of the Biden administration and conservatives’ interest in impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Asked by CNN’s Manu Raju on Tuesday about Greene’s latest inflammatory comments, McCarthy shrugged them off: “Oh, I think she said she was being facetious,” the possible future speaker answered. It was not a surprise that he just said Trump bore responsibility for the worst attack on the US democracy in recent times, it was actually part of his attempts to rewrite the history.
The same dynamic played out when McCarthy declined to criticize the ex-president for meeting with the white supremacist at a dinner also featuring the anti-Semite Ye who made antisemitic remarks. After a meeting at the White House between Biden and congressional leaders, the House Republican leader claimed that Trump had condemned him four times, when he had never done so before.
The Right Thing About Kevin McCarthy & the Gingrich Generation: How GOP Leaders Can Fail in Congress After the January 6, 2021 Insurrection
There is not a strong alternative to his candidacy for California’s top job, which is one thing the Republican does have going for him. The former head of the Freedom Caucus has launched a long-shot bid.
“Look, I think this: Kevin has worked very hard. I think he deserves the shot,” Trump said Friday in an interview with Breitbart News. He will be very good, hopefully, and I hope he is strong. and he’s going to do what everybody wants.”
In certain respects, Trump is facing a dilemma many other presidents and legislative leaders have encountered before. These leaders shift the political playing field and inspire a younger generation of politicians to do what they did. Former Speaker John Boehner, himself part of the Gingrich generation of Republicans that rocked Washington by abandoning old norms of governance and promoting a much more aggressive version of partisanship, repeatedly clashed with the Tea Party legislators he opened the doors of power to.
McCarthy and Trump had a brief falling out following the January 6, 2021, insurrection, with McCarthy even suggesting on a private phone call that was recorded that Trump should resign. But the two quickly made amends with McCarthy traveling to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida just a few weeks later.
McCarthy said Friday that the five conservative holdouts – Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia and Matt Rosendale of Montana – have not budged in their opposition to him and offered dire warnings that House Republicans’ hard-fought narrow majority could be derailed if they don’t bend.
“We’re still continuing to talk, but they have not moved,” McCarthy told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, taking to the airwaves to argue that the detractors threaten to put the entire House Republican agenda in peril and that basic decisions on legislating and investigating will be “all in jeopardy.”
Delving into “GOP dysfunction since Election Day,” the editorial board said, “Republicans are the gang that couldn’t shoot straight – except at one another.”
In the past couple of years since leaving policing, some of the conclusions I’ve drawn have had to do with the former president who set the disastrous riot on January 6 in motion. And a lot of my now-negative opinions about him, not surprisingly, have to do with the emotional and physical trauma that I and my brother and sister officers suffered that day. Values I’d always lived by as an officer – like “back the blue” – were literally hurled back at me by the same mob that was viciously trying to cut us down.
The Two Years of the Capitol: Trump, the Crimes, and the Victorry of President Joe Biden and the Insurrection on January 6
Two years ago, scores of House Republicans refused to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory and many spent years appeasing Trump’s lawless behavior. If the GOP gets its act together and picks a speaker, it will eventually control one part of Capitol Hill.
Two years have passed since I almost died defending the US Capitol from armed insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow our government, and they will not be getting any sympathy from me. The violent insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol two years ago, almost taking my life, ignored my pleas that I have kids.
Unfortunately, the nation faces as great a risk from political violence as ever, fueled by inflammatory speech and a refusal by many politicians on the right to acknowledge the ongoing spasms of extremism and conspiracy.
The conspiracists have a large group of the public in their corner: Millions of Americans believe that the use of force would be justified to restore Trump to the presidency, as political attacks are on the rise across the nation. This dangerous trend needs to be reversed.
Donald Trump didn’t seem to have much sway in the Republican infighting. Kevin McCarthy may do a good job, even a great one, if Trump is right in warning the GOP not to turn a great corner into a giant and Armageddon defense. Trump would offer more words of wisdom in another post: “VOTE FOR KEVIN, CLOSE THE DEAL, TAKE THE VICTORY…”
There has been no shortage of such reprehensible behavior in recent months, starting with McCarthy himself. McCarthy, then leader of the GOP, used to condemn the president for his role in ginning up therioters who went to the Capitol, but he later gave up those words. He traveled to Mar-a-Lago – presumably with one eye on the speaker’s gavel he had coveted for so long – pandering both to the defeated president and election deniers in his own caucus.
Since then, influential GOP House members have called the January 6 assault a “normal tourist visit.” On Holocaust Remembrance Day, some people have called for the execution of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Our leaders’ statements and actions have consequences. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that the insurrection on January 6 “would’ve been armed” if she had planned it – the same kind of heated rhetoric Trump used to rile up his supporters before they stormed the Capitol. She claimed that the remark had been made in jest and that she was being sarcastic.
Many of her allies in the House promote a baseless, crazy conspiracy theory. Small wonder, in the wake of such outlandish statements, that irate protesters are overrunning story hour at their local libraries, and calling for the banning of books from neighborhood schools.
Most of the recent acts of violence seem to have been instigated by right-wing rhetoric. MAGA rhetoric fueled the attack at the home of former Speaker Pelosi and the vandalization last month – allegedly by anti-LGBTQ activists – of the homes of three New York council members over opposition to drag queen story hour at libraries in the city.
Rep. Matt Gaetz encouraged voters to arm themselves at polls, and armed intimidation did take place as voters cast their ballots. Research has even shown that MAGA Republicans are more likely than others – including GOP moderates – to endorse violence as usually or always justified to advance their political objectives. And after agents searched Mar-a-Lago, Twitter posts threatening the FBI saw a dramatic spike.
Over-the-top rhetoric by GOP lawmakers is troubling enough. Their voting records have been filled with extremists’ views. That includes the 147 members of Congress who voted against the results of 2020’s free and fair election and the 35 House Republicans who voted against the creation of the January 6th Commission.
There were 21 Republican members who voted against DC and Capitol Police officers like me being able to accept the Presidential medal of freedom because of their actions during the insurrection.
It might be a surprise to people who didn’t know me but I have never considered myself to be a political person. I voted for Trump because I was turned off by the anti- police rhetoric on the left.
And sure, I dipped my toe into the last election, to oppose a few Trump-inspired candidates who I thought posed a danger to democracy. But I’ve never believed in politicians; I believe in people. I support two new groups demanding sanity and accountability from our politicians.
I will be at an event calling on congress to ramp up the fight against political violence this week, as well as veterans, members of Congress, and the group Courage for America. Courage for America is joining forces with another, new group Common Defense to call for a renewed effort to combat the kind of right-wing violence that almost ended my life. The Capitol reflecting pool is the location of the rally where two years ago a group ofMAGA supporters made threats to hang the Vice President if Mike Pence was elected president.
Political Violence: a Bad Idea? Julian Zelizer is a Professor at the University of Michigan and an Investigator at the U.S. Naval Observatory
I was a troublemaker as a kid, and law enforcement was the perfect spot for a rambunctious kid without a clear sense of direction. Being an investigator gave me the ability to keep revising and refining the conclusions that I drew, as I gathered more information.
Even though I was surrounded by violent protesters, I could not see the faces of my four daughters.
I want them to be able to live in a country where they can serve the people they’re elected to serve. Political violenceCondemning political violence is not a partisan issue. It’s a bad one.
Julian Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at the University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including his forthcoming co-edited work, “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lies and Legends About Our Past” (Basic Books). Follow him on social media. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.
The two-year anniversary of the first Georgia congressional insurrection: Donald Trump’s failure to win or his failure to evade
Gaetz cast his vote for Trump in the seventh round and told reporters, “This ends one of two ways: Kevin McCarthy withdraws from the race or we construct a straitjacket that he is unable to evade.”
The Republicans still didn’t budge after more than 10 votes. And while Gaetz cast a vote for Trump in the seventh and eighth round (and nominated him on the 11th), the prolonged deadlock was yet another sign that the former president’s power has diminished at a time when the 2024 presidential campaign is expected to ramp up.
Over time, the acolytes demand more and become more extreme than the leader who originally welcomed them into the fold. This led to Jim Jordan being tagged a “legislative terrorists”. They were the rebels, he was the establishment.
Trump had a nihilistic attitude to political combat that was a significant part of his influence. He helped to spur a younger, more extreme cohort to step up and demand power. It seems these burn-down-the-house conservatives will do almost anything in pursuit of victory and believe – like Trump – that chaos, instability, and hyper-divisiveness have great political value. And now some of these Trump loyalists might be close to concluding that they no longer need him – or at the very least, they no longer need to follow his every move.
The influence of Trump could make a difference in his defeat. He is unable to sway votes on Capitol Hill, and he is likely to confront a number of politicians, like former US Ambassador to the UNNikki Haley, who are capable of presenting a fresher and more polished version of Trumpism. If the GOP is full of Trumpian Republicans who ran with it, then voters might want to choose someone other than Donald Trump to lead them into the next political era.
But on Friday’s two-year anniversary of the worst attack on American democracy in the modern era, he’s finding out that even that supposedly career-enhancing bet is insufficient to unlock the votes of Trump’s heirs in the chaos wing of the GOP.
The Georgia congresswoman has downplayed the insurrection, and said riots would have won if she was in charge, but now she is complaining about the extremists of her colleagues.
Despite the attack on the US Capitol, the right-wing media machine and a still angry base of voters mean there are strong incentives for disruptor politicians in the ex-president’s image.
Trump may no longer be in the White House but the circus-style politics that he built on a foundation of rebellion in the GOP is back and has tied Washington in knots again. As a mark of how bad things are, the impasse over the speaker has prevented the GOP from even properly taking power given that lawmakers cannot be sworn in before a leader has been selected.
But that narrow margin – which will also put the majority in a precarious position on must-pass legislation like funding the government and raising the debt ceiling later on – is the direct result of voters being alienated by the ex-president’s incessant, false claims of 2020 voter fraud and the party failing to deliver the “red wave” many Republicans had predicted.
Boebert said that the country was watching democracy in action as McCarthy racked up around 200 votes from his conference while his radical opponents only attracted 20 votes. (The defections made it impossible for McCarthy to get a majority of the House’s support since Democrats backed their own leader, Hakeem Jeffries, who routinely got more votes than McCarthy, but also short of 218).
“This is not chaos. This is a constitutional republic at work. This is actually a really beautiful thing,” Boebert said. She’s correct in that the messiness unfolding on the floor is based on rules and procedures – the most basic elements of governing that Trump had sought to disrupt with his efforts to overturn the certification of the 2020 Electoral College votes.
Breaking the Gap: McCarthy and Biden at the Oval Office for a First Meeting of the House Committee on the Debt Ceiling
But her arguments founder on the reality of the rebels’ behavior. Many other Republicans complain that it is not clear what concessions the group around Gaetz will actually allow McCarthy to make.
In other words, the most extreme hardliners will only accept a candidate that shares their no-compromise, Nihilistic form of politics that effectively makes governing impossible.
In many ways, these demands are the culmination of anti-establishment, anti-government forces first unleashed decades ago by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Republican revolution. They were also the genesis of the anti-Washington Tea Party movement in the 2000s. The governing wing of the GOP was driven out by Trump as he brought down the institutions of government and accountability from inside as president.
Still, a McCarthy ally, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, told CNN that he was confident that a deal could clear the way soon for a solution to the impasse.
“But I will be talking to him, I want to work with him where there are areas of common ground.”
The anodyne nature of the descriptions about the two politicians defined by their close attention to personal relationships, and elevated because of it, is telling in the lead up to their high stakes private meeting in the Oval Office.
And, after weeks of both sides attempting to set the conditions for a battle between two diametrically opposed pathways to raising the debt ceiling, expectations for the meeting are low.
CNN quotes one House Democrat saying that the first round of 20 would be the start of the debt ceiling debate. Settle in.
The speaker and the president have a June 8th deadline to raise the debt ceiling, but little in the form of tangible common ground to present a path forward.
For the first time since becoming House speaker, California Republican Kevin McCarthy will meet Wednesday with President Biden to discuss, among other things, how to avoid a default on the U.S. debt.
But he’ll demand a House Republican proposal first – something White House officials are keenly aware would carry significant political value for Democrats and have the potential for splitting the Republican conference.
Eight years after Biden invited McCarthy to the Naval Observatory for breakfast, the speaker will once again be a guest in Biden’s home. Eight years later, a midterm election has once again thrust the California Republican to a critical place in Biden’s portfolio.
White House advisers point to that period as one of self-inflicted turmoil that pushed the US economy to the brink of disaster, citing it as evidence that there should be no negotiation at all. The time McCarthy voted to raise or suspend the debt ceiling when a Republican was in the White House is now on the list.
At a time when the Democrats were in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, the House minority leader played a part in that. Democrats could move bills through the chamber without Republicans, unlike the Senate, where Biden’s major bipartisan legislative proposals required GOP votes.
Biden also has a long-standing and productive relationship with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who appeared with him at an event celebrating the bipartisan infrastructure law in Kentucky last month.
White House and House Republicans in the War of the Deal: The Case for a Clean, Low-Energy Wall and a Low-Carbon Debt Ceiling
It became apparent that White House officials were schadenfreude in the start of McCarthy’s effort to get the Republican votes to be Speaker when there were 14 failed votes.
White House officials, though they went to great lengths not to weigh in on the issue, saw it differently, and that’s reflected in their approach to the debt ceiling where there are certain questions as to whether McCarthy can garner the votes of 218 Republicans for anything at all.
It’s a position that runs headlong into Biden’s refusal to talk about anything but a clean increase – a position White House officials maintain is not a bluff or posturing. They’ve been deeply engaged behind the scenes in preparation for the long battle ahead, keeping a close eye on House GOP legislative proposals both present and past.
The White House has consistently said lifting the ceiling is not up for negotiation. Biden said earlier this month that a default would be “a calamity that exceeds anything that’s ever happened financially in the United States.”
Democrats point out that Republican lawmakers voted to lift the debt ceiling three times under former President Donald Trump — and argue that the health of the economy should not be used as a bargaining chip.