Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., walks out with House Republicans to talk concerning the passage of H.R. 734 The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act on Capitol Hill on Thursday, April 20, 2023, in Washington, DC.
Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — A House Republican bill to lift the debt limit while dramatically cutting federal spending faces its first test Tuesday afternoon, when the sprawling laws is reviewed and “marked up” by the House Rules Committee,
The panel is predicted to vote on whether to send the plan to the House floor.
Republicans insist they may only vote to lift the debt ceiling, and avoid a potentially catastrophic U.S. debt default, if President Joe Biden and the Senate’s Democratic majority conform to an extended list of budgetary demands contained within the 320-page bill, dubbed the Limit, Save and Grow Act.
Within the week because the laws was first unveiled, several recent reports have suggested that a bigger than expected drop in federal tax receipts this yr may hasten the arrival of the so-called X-date. That is the projected date the Treasury Department will exhaust the emergency measures it’s taking to stop a federal debt default.
Goldman Sachs analysts wrote that their “base case stays for the debt limit deadline to fall in late July,” so long as tax receipts only fall by 30%. If federal revenues fall by 35%, nonetheless, the x-date could move as much as “early June.”
Yet hours before Tuesday’s committee meeting, it was still uncertain whether all of the Republicans on the panel would support amendments that will probably be crucial to winning over GOP holdouts within the broader caucus when the laws involves the ground.
Furthermore, there was still a Republican member of the committee, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, who had yet to substantiate that he would vote for the bill.
“We have got to still do some work on it, but [the bill is] a step in the correct direction,” Norman said last week to Breitbart News.
Even when it were to pass the total House, the bill faces long odds within the Democratic-controlled Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has already declared it dead within the upper chamber.
An equally tall roadblock awaits it within the White House, which issued a scathing veto threat of the bill on Tuesday. The Biden administration called it a “reckless try and extract extreme concessions as a condition for the USA simply paying the bills it has already incurred.”
The bill would raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion in exchange for slashing federal spending and imposing tough recent work requirements on many recipients of food aid and welfare assistance. The bill would also eliminate a central tenet of Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act: green energy tax breaks.
Moreover, the laws would cancel Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan and rescind $80 billion the IRA appropriated to the Internal Revenue Service.
Republican leadership understands that the bill in its current form won’t develop into law. As a substitute, it is meant to function McCarthy’s opening salvo in his looming negotiation with Biden over the debt limit and federal spending.
If McCarthy can pass it through his fractious caucus, it will also telegraph his ability to impose discipline within the House GOP, potentially strengthening his hand with the White House.
The margins are tight. Republicans can only afford to lose 4 votes of their caucus and still pass the bill on the House floor without Democratic support.
To that end, Republican Whip Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota has been furiously negotiating with members of his party to get everyone on board.
Over the weekend, Emmer said that while the ultimate bill won’t be perfect, the choice for a Republican House member could be worse.
“Your alternative is you vote for this to maneuver this forward and do what’s in the most effective interest of the country otherwise you give Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer a blank check,” Emmer said on Fox News Sunday.
He also suggested that there is a limit to how much he was willing to go forwards and backwards with some Republican holdouts.
“Watch out about moving into a wrestling match with a pig in a mud hole, because after some time you would possibly discover the pig is having an excellent time,” Emmer said.
