House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy speaks to reporters following a gathering with U.S. President Joe Biden and other congressional leaders on the White House in Washington, U.S., November 29, 2022.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
WASHINGTON — As President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy prepare to satisfy Wednesday afternoon to debate the looming U.S. debt ceiling deadline, either side are waging an increasingly bitter messaging battle, one that provides a glimpse of how the following few months of political knife fighting could unfold.
On Wednesday morning, McCarthy held a closed meeting along with his Republican caucus within the Capitol to preview his sit-down with the president. Leaving that meeting, the speaker said its purpose was “just education” for his members, in accordance with Bloomberg News.
“If [Biden] doesn’t wish to play politics, and if he wants to start out negotiating, let’s sit down and begin negotiating where we could come together for the American public,” said McCarthy.
But while the House speaker says he’s preparing for a negotiation, the White Home is battening down the hatches for a fight.
A White House memo circulated Tuesday sought to portray the three:15 p.m. ET meeting as a showdown, one between a Democratic president who will protect Social Security, Medicare, medical insurance and food stamps, and a House Republican majority that may demand cuts to those programs in exchange for helping Democrats avoid a catastrophic default on the nation’s debt.
The Treasury Department has began to take extraordinary steps to maintain paying the federal government’s bills, and expects to give you the option to avoid a first-ever default a minimum of until early June. Failure by Congress to lift or suspend the debt limit by then could wreak economic havoc world wide.
McCarthy has consistently said cuts to the favored Social Security and Medicare programs are “off the table” in any debt ceiling talks. But Democrats point to past GOP plans and proposals to argue that the party ultimately goals to slash those advantages.
The three-page memo from National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young said Biden plans to ask McCarthy for 2 things: first, to publicly guarantee the U.S. won’t ever default on its debt.
It is a promise that, if made, would effectively strip McCarthy of any leverage he has within the debt ceiling process.
Second, Biden plans to ask McCarthy when House Republicans will release a “detailed, comprehensive budget.” It’s little secret that House Republicans are divided over which federal programs to chop of their broader effort to trim public spending. By pressuring McCarthy to release an in depth budget, Democrats hope to highlight these divisions.
McCarthy scoffed on the memo.
“Mr. President: I received your staff’s memo. I’m not excited by political games,” the House speaker wrote on Twitter shortly after the memo was released. “I’m coming to barter for the American people.”
But while McCarthy may say he’s coming to speak, Biden has repeatedly said he won’t negotiate with Republicans over the debt limit under any circumstances. That is despite the incontrovertible fact that Biden needs Republican votes, and McCarthy’s support, with the intention to move debt ceiling laws through the House.
McCarthy took aim at Biden over this, too.
“It’s irresponsible to say because the leader of the free world he isn’t going to barter,” McCarthy told reporters within the Capitol on Tuesday. “I hope that is just [Biden’s] staff and never him.”
As an alternative of tying government spending cuts to the debt ceiling vote, the president desires to take care of GOP demands in separate budget negotiations later this yr.
For House Republicans, that is a non-starter. They view a vote to extend the federal government’s borrowing power and their demands for cuts to government spending as inextricably linked. They equate the U.S. government to a family with maxed out bank cards that should reduce its household spending.
“We’d like to sit down down and have a responsible adult conversation like families do,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said Tuesday at a press conference within the Capitol. “Because if a family maxes out the bank card, they are not just going to go get one other bank card.”
“You are going to pay your debts,” said Scalise. “But you are also going to have a responsible conversation about how we stop this from happening again.”
To be clear, the debt ceiling doesn’t operate like a consumer bank card. Raising the debt limit doesn’t clear the best way for any latest spending, it merely allows the federal government to cover its preexisting commitments.
Complicating McCarthy’s task on Wednesday is the incontrovertible fact that all GOP caucus members don’t share his belief that the federal government must raise the debt ceiling. Several fiscal hardliners within the House have already made it clear they’re willing to force a default on the national debt in the event that they do not get massive spending cuts in return for passing it.
Nevertheless it comes with a catch: Any bill that the House approves must also give you the option to win 60 votes to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate. There, the variety of draconian spending cuts sought by far-right House Republicans would haven’t any probability of passing.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speak to the media in Washington, D.C., U.S. August 7, 2022 and July 27, 2022 in a mix of file photographs.
Reuters
On Wednesday, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of Recent York reminded the House speaker of his challenge.
“For days, Speaker McCarthy has heralded this sit-down as some sort of major win in his debt ceiling talks,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “Speaker McCarthy, for those who do not have a plan, you possibly can’t seriously pretend you are having any real negotiations.”
McCarthy’s task of uniting his unruly caucus behind one plan could be difficult under any circumstances. Nevertheless it’s all of the more difficult because his majority within the Home is so narrow.
If he were to attempt to pass a House debt ceiling bill with only Republican votes, McCarthy’s margin for error could be razor thin. He could only afford to lose 4 members of his caucus and still reach the 218-vote majority needed to pass the laws.
He could also attempt to craft a debt ceiling bill that might pass with votes from more moderate Republicans and a big bloc of Democrats.
Betting on members of the opposing party to bail him out could be dangerous. But not as dangerous as failing to lift the debt ceiling altogether.
For each Democrats and Republicans, the worst case scenario could be an unprecedented government default on its debt that might halt every day operations throughout the federal government and cause turmoil in equity markets and the broader economy.
A Moody’s Analytics report last yr said a default on Treasury bonds could throw the U.S. economy right into a tailspin as bad because the Great Recession. If the U.S. were to default, gross domestic product would drop 4% and 6 million employees would lose their jobs, Moody’s projected.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has already invoked so-called “extraordinary measures” to avoid default. Yellen has also pointed to early June because the date by which those measures will run out, and by which Congress must act to lift the limit or face dire consequences.
U.S. President Joe Biden looks toward House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, during a gathering with congressional leaders on the White House in Washington, U.S., November 29, 2022.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
Going into Biden and McCarthy’s meeting, absolutely the necessity of raising the debt ceiling could also be one in all the few things they agree upon. Yet with several months to go until the risks develop into more dire, there may be little expectation that Wednesday’s sit-down between Biden and McCarthy will yield any breakthroughs.
As an alternative, the true significance of the meeting could also be that it would offer the House speaker and the president, who have no idea one another thoroughly, their first probability to start out constructing some sort of working relationship. But when this week was any indication, cooperation remains to be a great distance off.
Biden on Tuesday called McCarthy a “decent man,” but suggested he’s beholden to the far-right wing of his party.
Speaking at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Recent York, Biden took aim on the deals McCarthy made with conservative holdouts with the intention to be elected House Speaker. He called the agreements “off the wall.”
The party that McCarthy leads today “is just not your father’s Republican Party,” said Biden. “That is a special breed of cat.”
It stays to be seen whether McCarthy can herd the entire cats that Biden characterised into the identical pen. And if he can, whether the president will come to the table.