Complaining about a lack of outreach from the White House, they instead criticized Biden over his refusal-until recently-to negotiate. But those lawmakers have stuck by the speaker. Democrats had been hoping to persuade Republicans representing swing districts to buck McCarthy and help pass a debt-ceiling increase. But Biden’s approach this time is proving to be neither realistic nor sustainable, especially after Speaker Kevin McCarthy defied expectations last month by getting a budget-slashing debt-ceiling bill through his narrow House majority.Ĭrucially, Biden failed to win strong support for his strategy from House centrists. “That’s of course different from avoiding default, which is nonnegotiable.”īiden’s no-negotiation stance was born of past experience, when in 2011 Republicans dragged out debt talks with the Obama administration to the brink of default, resulting in a downgrade of the U.S.’s credit rating. “The president has been emphasizing for months that he’s eager to have budget negotiations,” a White House official, who requested anonymity to explain the administration’s somewhat tortured position, told me. The Biden administration still claims to be haggling only over the budget, not the debt ceiling. According to various reports, a deal to avert default could include some changes to permitting rules that would speed up domestic-energy production a revocation of unused COVID funds additional work requirements for some federal programs (although the president has ruled out any modifications to Medicaid) and, most significant, a cap on overall federal spending. Exactly what the two parties are discussing is only starting to become clear. Read: This debt crisis is not like 2011’s. Asked specifically about the debt ceiling on Sunday-in anticipation of a second White House visit by congressional leaders, planned for today-Biden told reporters, “Well, I’ve learned a long time ago, and you know as well as I do: It never is good to characterize a negotiation in the middle of a negotiation.” As recently as Friday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declared without equivocation, “We are not going to negotiate over the debt limit.”īut Biden himself has dropped the pretense that his weeks-long budget discussions with the GOP have not revolved around the debt ceiling. Paying the government’s bills by raising the U.S.’s statutory borrowing limit would be nonnegotiable. No longer would Democrats allow Republicans to hold hostage the nation’s creditworthiness and economic prestige. But on the most fundamental point of dispute, President Joe Biden has already caved: He’s negotiating with Republicans over the debt ceiling.įor months, the president’s ironclad position has been that the debt ceiling is not a bargaining chip. The White House and Congress have not made much progress in their talks to avert an unprecedented, and potentially calamitous, national default that could occur as soon as early June.
0 kommentar(er)
