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Tag: Centrist

  • How McCarthy could pick off centrist Dems with 4 debt-limit ideas

    How McCarthy could pick off centrist Dems with 4 debt-limit ideas

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    On several occasions during debt-limit negotiations over the last decade, the unpredictable fallout of a looming deadline has helped persuade dozens of lawmakers from each party to begrudgingly support concessions they didn’t love. This time, ideas like beefing up work requirements for food assistance programs aren’t gaining the bipartisan appeal Republicans might have hoped for, while other proposals — like easing permitting for energy projects — might attract enough interest among Democrats to get added to a final deal.

    Here’s a breakdown of the particular policy areas in the House Republican bill that might offer an opening for a bipartisan deal, with a clear-eyed assessment of how realistic those hopes really are:

    Energy permitting

    A sizable share of lawmakers in both parties agree that it takes too long to get permits for energy project construction in the U.S. So House Republicans’ push to streamline permitting rules just might have legs.

    But what an agreement would look like, exactly, remains a big question. And Democrats remain resistant to linking energy policy to the debt-limit debate.

    “This may be one of the few things we can actually accomplish in this Congress,” Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) said. He added that it’s “very clear” Republicans are focused on permitting for oil and gas pipelines, instead of electric transmission lines — an emphasis Democrats could shift.

    “They are just out of step with where the economy and country are,” Heinrich said of House GOP lawmakers. “That’s hopefully where the Senate comes in and rebalances.”

    Worried that green perks could go to waste from the party-line tax and climate law they cleared last year, many Democrats want the federal government to make it easier to connect clean energy to the grid. Progressives are reluctant to shorten the length of environmental reviews for energy projects, however, for fear that could hurt low-income communities and communities of color.

    Details: The House Republican package would streamline permitting reviews for energy projects and mines. But it’s also chock full of partisan priorities like protecting fracking, forcing the sale of oil and gas leases, killing tax benefits for green energy projects and pooh-poohing Biden’s decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline.

    Sympathizers: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has tried to rally bipartisan support for overhauling energy permitting rules. But he failed last year, as progressive lawmakers argued against changing the rules for environmental reviews and Republicans spurned him for supporting Democrats’ trademark climate law.

    In the House, when the chamber first voted in March on the package of energy policies that got rolled into the debt limit package, four Democrats joined as “yeas.” Those supporters included Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, who hail from oil-and-gas-rich Texas, as well as centrists Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington and Jared Golden of Maine.

    Work requirements

    House Republicans are trying to get a handful of swing-state Democrats in the Senate to support tougher work requirements for food assistance programs. But most have resoundingly rejected the idea.

    Details: The debt limit bill House Republicans passed last week includes provisions that would expand existing work requirements for the nation’s largest food aid program, often referred to by its acronym of SNAP, along with other emergency aid that low-income families can use to buy food.

    Specifically, it requires so-called “able-bodied adults without dependents” who receive SNAP to continue meeting work requirements until they’re 55 years old, rather than the current age limit at 49.

    Sympathizers: Manchin has signaled he could be open to beefing up work requirements, potentially backing tighter rules for people who are “capable and able to do it.” House Republicans are quick to highlight Biden’s own embrace of welfare reform during the Clinton administration in the 1990s, when the position was less fraught among Democrats and Biden was a sitting senator — but the stricter work rules getting pushed by today’s GOP go beyond those.

    Spending caps

    Democrats have insisted that they’re ready to haggle over federal funding for the fiscal year that kicks off on Oct. 1 — just not with the Treasury Department’s borrowing ability at stake.

    In order for that to happen, though, Republicans would have to agree to separate government funding caps that aren’t tied to debt-ceiling talks. And that would amount to a major shift from the GOP’s current demand for $130 billion in spending cuts in exchange for a vote to lift the debt limit.

    If those talks get decoupled, it’s plausible that both sides could reach an agreement on military spending, since there’s already broad bipartisan support for ensuring the Pentagon gets enough money to at least keep pace with inflation.

    Democrats would never sign off on the domestic spending cuts that GOP leaders are seeking. But it’s possible that they could cut a deal with a handful of Republicans — think centrists, purple-state members and appropriators — to keep non-defense funding essentially stagnant, pairing small cuts with increases elsewhere to rein in spending.

    Details: The House debt limit bill would cap spending at $1.47 trillion for the upcoming fiscal year, rolling back the clock by two years on federal funding levels. Then for a decade, funding would be allowed to grow by 1 percent every year.

    Sympathizers: A slew of moderate Democrats in both chambers have expressed support for fiscal restraint in the abstract, including long-term strategies for stabilizing the national debt like the 2010 budget plan that proposed trillions of dollars in tax increases and spending cuts.

    “I am certainly not opposed to working on ways to reduce the debt. I am very, very, very opposed to putting the full faith and credit of the country at risk,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who faces a tough reelection in a red state, has said. “So you know, if we’re talking about doing something like [the 2010 plan], I not only think that’s a good idea, put me on it.”

    Ending student loan relief

    It’s hard to see Biden negotiating away a major domestic policy achievement that his administration has so vigorously defended in court. Some have even credited the president’s student debt relief plan, announced in the months leading up to the midterm elections, with helping limit Republican gains in the House last November.

    A few moderate Democrats have criticized the president’s embrace of mass forgiveness of student loan debt, however, and have signaled openness to a separate Republican effort to nix the relief.

    Details: The House GOP bill would overturn Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, which promises up to $20,000 in debt relief per borrower, even as the president’s plan remains in limbo ahead of a challenge at the Supreme Court.

    The Republican bill would also block the administration’s new income-driven repayment plan that’s designed to lower monthly payments. And it would permanently curtail the Education Department’s power to create new policies that increase the taxpayer cost of the student loan program.

    Sympathizers: When the president rolled out his student loan forgiveness plan last summer, Manchin called it “excessive,” arguing that people need to “earn it” through public service like working for the federal government. Other politically vulnerable Democrats have also spoken against the plan, including Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Michael Bennet of Colorado, as well as Rep. Chris Pappas of New Hampshire.

    Meredith Lee Hill and Josh Siegel contributed to this report.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Centrist Democrats hatch secret plan to head off debt ceiling calamity

    Centrist Democrats hatch secret plan to head off debt ceiling calamity

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    But Biden officials and party leaders, however, see it far differently and are bristling at the attempts at a compromise, according to four lawmakers familiar with the discussions. Their party’s message to those plotting centrists: Your efforts are unlikely to succeed and risk hurting our goal of a clean debt ceiling increase.

    The intraparty friction is growing as Washington’s debt crisis gets less theoretical and more urgent with each passing week. And the freelancing Democratic centrists may not have helped their cause by getting involved just as party leaders began seeing a political advantage in the fiscal fight — as long as they can keep the onus on Speaker Kevin McCarthy to unveil a plan that might pass the GOP-controlled House, with unpopular spending cuts likely to be attached.

    “We’re gaining ground because of [House Republicans’] inability to put together a plan,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a brief interview. “I’m certainly willing to entertain a mix of things on the budget. Not on the debt ceiling.”

    A White House official said the administration has “not spoken to the Problem Solvers about this.” Centrist Democrats, however, say they’ve been made well aware the effort isn’t likely to win any endorsements from party leaders — and have decided to forge ahead anyway as the debt impasse sparks high anxiety, with Congress gone until April 17.

    Biden and McCarthy have had zero recent contact on the debt other than jabs exchanged through the press, despite the jittery U.S. banking sector further rattling the situation. Democratic leaders say they’ll accept only a clean debt limit bill, but emboldened House Republicans insist that would never pass their chamber.

    Complicating it all: Republican leaders won’t yet describe precisely what they want in exchange for their votes to raise the nation’s borrowing ceiling. Schumer, in response, has taken up the chant “show us your plan” for more than two months and counting.

    Enter that group of moderate Democrats, who have privately met with GOP centrists since February, in defiance of their leadership. Their talks remain in the early stages, and two lawmakers familiar with the discussions said they have not honed specific details yet.

    One centrist Democrat, who along with others addressed the talks on condition of anonymity, observed that “you’ve got party leaders in both houses that don’t want us to talk to one another.”

    They’re not listening to those nudges to stop talking: “None of us work for the White House. We work for our constituents. And they should start talking and negotiating,” said Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who co-leads the centrist Blue Dog Coalition.

    Centrist Republicans involved in the discussions call them a recognition of what Biden and most Hill Democrats have denied — McCarthy’s GOP simply won’t accept a clean debt hike. And as two months have passed since McCarthy’s last sitdown with Biden, moderate Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said he’s one of those working within the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus because “we’ve got to have a plan B.”

    With debt limit talks stuck in a mud puddle, House Republicans have seemingly abandoned plans to introduce a budget this spring, which could springboard the talks. That’s because GOP leaders are struggling to coalesce around a viable blueprint thanks to their members’ ever-expanding wish list and the realization that, for some hardline conservatives, there may be no level of austerity that would cut deep enough.

    McCarthy and his team still want to draft their own package of deficit-reducing proposals, which his advisers say would mix ideas such as social program cuts with policies to increase U.S. energy production or tighten border security. Even so, the House GOP may not be able to unify behind such a plan.

    “They don’t have a working majority,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said.

    Those dynamics have convinced Schumer and Biden administration officials that they’re winning the public messaging battle over the debt ceiling. And so they’re increasingly content to hold the line on their demand for a clean increase to the borrowing limit.

    The White House has jumped at opportunities to hammer Republicans over their proposed spending cuts, terming one set of demands from the House Freedom Caucus a “five-alarm fire.”

    While most lawmakers expect the standoff will drag into the summer, Biden allies have circulated recent remarks from centrist members like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) expressing concern over the prospect of a debt ceiling crisis — hopeful that more Republicans are deciding it’s not worth the fight.

    “There’s starting to be more appreciation that the full faith and credit of the United States is not a source of leverage,” a White House official said.

    But Senate Republicans across the Capitol aren’t fleeing McCarthy’s foxhole yet. The most active deal-cutting senators are either sitting out or in the dark.

    “The only hints of an idea I hear is an effort among [House] Republicans to come up with something they can vote for and send it over here,” said Romney. “I don’t know of any bipartisan [effort] here. Not with me.”

    Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) also said she’d heard nothing of the Problem Solvers’ work.

    “I don’t think you can expect a lot of movement on an issue like that until you start getting a little bit closer,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said, adding that Democrats “want to run out the clock” but the strategy might not work: “I don’t think that they have that option.”

    The Biden administration insists it won’t shift course. In a sign of the White House’s growing confidence, aides quickly brushed off McCarthy’s demand for a second meeting, arguing that there’s little point in the two men sitting down until Republicans decide among themselves what they want.

    While Biden has not completely ruled out talking with McCarthy before Republicans publish their own budget, there’s little desire among aides to do anything that might help the speaker unite his fractious conference.

    “How does he win here?” one economic adviser to the White House said of McCarthy. “They don’t really have a strategic plan.”

    The White House has yet to weigh in formally on the ongoing centrist discussions about a backup approach. But there’s little doubt that it’s at odds with Biden’s preferred strategy. If anything, one adviser suggested, the likelihood that the moderates’ effort implodes or fails to win over either party’s leadership may only end up illustrating how far apart the two sides are.

    Back in the Capitol, several Democrats said it’s worthwhile to discuss alternatives and broadly urged Biden to restart talks with the GOP.

    Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), another member of the Problem Solvers, said it’s on both Biden and McCarthy to come up with a plan. ”Otherwise, it’s going to be a disaster. It already is, right?”

    Jennifer Scholtes and Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )