Biden-McCarlenger Deal and the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023: a Madame, a Bad Idea for the American Public
The deal Biden and McCarthy struck is a modest package of spending nips and safety-net tucks. The package is large and some of the policies is stupid. Some of it is cruel and some of it is not. With no budget caps or automatic cuts, it is estimated that there will be a 69 billion cut to spending next year. It leaves Biden’s major achievements intact, including the Inflation Reduction Act.
Threatening default — and we came within days of it this time — in order to get a deal like this is like threatening to detonate a bomb beneath the bank unless the teller gives you $150 and a commemorative mug. It’s a bizarre mismatch of means and ends.
McCarthy’s position as speaker is dependent on negotiations for the deal and subsequent vote. McCarthy had to balance his desire to appease the majority of his conference without alienating Democrats with his need to support the bill.
As the threat of a financial default nears, the Senate has started debate on compromise, bipartisan legislation to lift the debt ceiling with just days to spare.
The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, which would lift the debt limit for nearly two years, overwhelmingly cleared the chamber Wednesday evening on a 314-117 vote.
“Was [the bill] everything I wanted? No. But sitting with one House, with a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president who didn’t want to meet with us, I think we did pretty dang good for the American public,” McCarthy said during a press conference following the vote, referencing his frequent complaint that Biden wouldn’t meet with him again after a February meeting until House Republicans passed a debt ceiling bill of their own.
Democrats during the floor debate reiterated a claim they’ve made for months: that House Republicans held the economy hostage by not agreeing to pass a clean debt limit bill.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries praised his members for pushing back against “extreme MAGA Republican efforts to jam right-wing cuts down the throat of the American people.”
House-Debates the Bounds on the Biden-McCarthy Debt Ceiling as Default Deadline Line looms: Schumer vs. McCarthy
The bill now heads to the Democratic-controlled Senate, where it will need 60 votes before it would go to Biden’s desk. Schumer said that he was prepared to stay the weekend and pass the legislation.
McCarthy said that he probably would’ve done the same thing if Jeffries had given his members the green light to vote. Well played.
The CBO forecasts the overall agreement would cut federal deficits by about $1.5 trillion over the next decade. That’s just under 7% of what those deficits were projected to be prior to the deal. The deficit reduction would come from caps on discretionary spending other than defense, which makes up a small portion of the federal budget.
The bill phases in higher age limits for work requirements on certain federal safety net programs like food stamps, lifting the maximum age from 50 to 54 by 2025. It also would create new exemptions that waive those requirements for all veterans and those experiencing homelessness, and young adults between 18-24-years old aging out of foster care.
A bloc of conservative members expressed their dismay at some of the provisions in the legislation, and argue McCarthy didn’t align the bill close enough to a version the House passed in April.
“People want to compare to what they wanted,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said ahead of the vote. “But they should compare to where we were at, which was we were going to get a clean debt ceiling with nothing.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/31/1179246766/house-debates-the-biden-mccarthy-debt-ceiling-bill-as-default-deadline-looms
Towards a New chapter in bipartisanship from the fight for the gavel to the Democrat Electoral Term: New Hampshire Rep. Annie Kuster
GOP members left a closed-door conference meeting Tuesday night largely quashing the idea that disaffected members could move to oust McCarthy under a provision he agreed to during his fight for the gavel that allows any single lawmaker to bring up a snap vote to potentially oust the speaker.
Meanwhile, some Democratic members struggled between wanting to pass a bill to avoid a potentially catastrophic default and voting for legislation with provisions their constituents don’t support, like work requirements and speeding up permitting on energy projects.
New Hampshire Rep. Annie Kuster told NPR Biden has been “very involved” in reaching out to members to boost support for the bill. The two talked on the phone on Monday. Kuster chairs the center-left New Democrat Coalition, which provided a major portion of Democratic votes Wednesday night. Kuster believes that the compromise deals will open the way for a new chapter in bipartisanship.
“Since the prior president and certainly since Jan. 6th, it’s been very difficult in the Capitol working across the aisle. It’s been very painful,” she said. “And I think this whole agreement is a turning of a corner toward a more productive relationship between Republicans and Democrats.”
“We didn’t like the way it was negotiated and we were not going to let our country go over a fiscal cliff, but there was a group of people who felt strongly about that and they were our guiding force,” she said.
Speaker Chuck Schumer and the Senate Select Committee on the Debt Limit Measure: Comments on the Sensitivity of the Causal Budget to Climate Change
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer kicked off the legislative session on Thursday by warning senators they would stay until they voted on the measure.
“The bill is now in the Senate, where we begin the process today of passing this legislation as soon as possible,” Schumer said. “The Senate will stay in session until we send a bill avoiding default to President Biden’s desk. We will keep working until the job is done.”
The Senate was attempting to broker a deal among its 100 members to speed up voting. Senate leaders are confident that it will pass.
To speed up the voting schedule, leaders and rank-and-file senators were trying to reach an agreement on how many amendments would be considered before a final vote on the debt limit bill. Schumer warned that none of the amendments could be adopted without raising the risk of default.
The bill’s opposition in the House, like in the Senate, has resulted in strange bedfellows. Republican senators. Mike Lee of Utah, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Vermont Independent had spoken out against the plan.
Graham is concerned that the legislation does not include enough money for defense and aid to Ukraine. Sanders has argued the plan raises new concerns about threats to climate change.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/06/01/1179550546/senate-debt-ceiling-bill
Progress in the House Way Forward: GOP Sen. Corrigendum to “Congressman’s Resolution to the Problem of the Budget and the Debt Problem”
With his narrow control of the chamber, McCarthy saw the plan win support among majorities of both parties. Democrats helped to shepherd the legislation through, with 165 of them joining 149 Republicans to approve it.
The package includes spending changes and a debt ceiling increase in exchange for them.
The deal that the House passed last night is a step in the right direction, he stated on the Senate floor. “But make no mistake: there is much more work to be done. The fight to reel in wasteful spending is far from over.”