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  • Days after House GOP bill is approved, debt ceiling deadlock continues

    Days after House GOP bill is approved, debt ceiling deadlock continues

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    House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark called on Republicans to “be the grown-ups in the room,” in addressing the debt ceiling.

    “The American people are looking at us and saying, this shouldn’t be a partisan drama playing out that we are going to foot the bill for,” the Massachusetts Democrat said on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki.” “Avoid a default crisis that is manufactured by the GOP. And then we can go and talk about investments.”

    But Republicans are continuing to blame President Joe Biden, who has called on Congress to pass a clean debt limit increase, saying he will not negotiate with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the issue, citing historical precedent.

    “Happy to meet with McCarthy,” Biden said at the end of a brief press conference at the White House on Wednesday. “But not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended. That’s not negotiable.”

    House Majority Leader Steve Scalise called on Biden to come to the table Sunday.

    “The White House ultimately needs to get into this negotiation. The president has been in hiding for two months, Martha,” Scalise told host Martha Raddatz during an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” “That’s not acceptable to Americans. They expect the president to sit in a room with Speaker McCarthy and start negotiating.”

    Biden, Scalise said, is “trying to run out the clock and create a debt crisis.”

    “We passed a bill to address the problem. It’s time now for the president to get in this game, get off the sidelines and let’s start negotiating and figuring this out. Not in June when we get to the midnight hour, but today.”

    Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Biden is willing to negotiate with McCarthy — just not over the debt limit.

    “What he said is that he’s not going to negotiate with people who are threatening to literally blow up our economy, right, put more people out of work, drive up costs, in order to get their way,” Van Hollen said on “Fox News Sunday.”

    “He will sit down with Speaker McCarthy to talk about these issues in the framework of the budget and the appropriations process,” Van Hollen added.

    If Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling the U.S. government could default on its debt in coming months, according to financial analysts, an event that could plunge the country into economic crisis, as well as harm the nation’s credibility internationally.

    But Biden knows “that we can’t default,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

    One option he sees as a way forward: a sit-down between Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

    “He’s saying we can discuss that, we can negotiate but first pay your bills. And I think that — I think Senator McConnell understands this, and I think the President will sit down with Senator McConnell,” Khanna said.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • House majority whip rejects idea that GOP debt bill is doomed

    House majority whip rejects idea that GOP debt bill is doomed

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    The measure, which passed the House by a vote of 217-215, is widely perceived as having no chance of passing the Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority.

    Emmer didn’t explain why he thought Senate Democrats other than Manchin might come to embrace the legislation.

    If no agreement is reached, the nation would bump up against its debt ceiling, which is now projected to happen in July, and default on its debts. President Joe Biden has said he is willing to negotiate over the nation’s budget, but wants the debt limit raised independently of those talks, without any conditions, as occurred during the Trump administration. Most Capitol Hill Democrats have said the same thing.

    Emmer said no negotiations are needed: The Senate could simply approve the House GOP bill and Biden could sign it.

    “Our recommendation is: We passed it through the House; take it up in the Senate and pass it,” Emmer said.

    As he tried to redirect the narrative on the legislation, Emmer also rejected the idea that the bill was built on spending cuts, referring instead to “spending reforms.”

    “I take a little issue, Dana, with the cuts language that the media likes to use all the time,” the Minnesota Republican told host Dana Bash. “This is a transformational bill. It would limit spending.”

    Speaking later on the same CNN program, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said he didn’t see much hope that the debt crisis would be resolved quickly or easily.

    “I’m really concerned about the debt limit when we approach it,” Kinzinger said.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • House GOP leaves Washington with a debt win — but not quite a breakthrough

    House GOP leaves Washington with a debt win — but not quite a breakthrough

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    While Republicans believed the plan they passed Wednesday would force Biden to the table, the White House and most congressional Democrats have brushed it off and made clear they won’t entertain the GOP’s demands. Instead, both sides have retreated further into their corners, with each party planning to spend the coming days talking almost entirely to its respective base voters.

    “I think we in the House ought to message the hell out of it,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said, warning that Democrats would “make false claims” about their bill: “We need to be on offense on the message.”

    As for the next steps, Roy said: “The ball’s in the president’s court and the Senate court.”

    Roy is far from alone in the GOP conference in arguing that the problem is no longer in their hands, putting the blame squarely on Democrats’ shoulders. Most Republican lawmakers insist they have little anxiety about the increasingly rattled nerves on Wall Street as a dysfunctional Congress barrels closer toward this summer’s drop-dead debt limit date.

    “Every day that he refuses to negotiate, he is putting the U.S. economy at risk,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said. “The next move is on Biden.”

    Top Democrats have revealed little about their next steps. While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has called on Republicans to work with him on a clean debt plan, it’s unclear if his caucus would even unite to vote in favor of one. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), specifically, has put the onus on Biden to meet with McCarthy.

    And at least some in the party are getting nervous: “We all should be getting anxious,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said.

    All the focus next week will be on the Senate, which will return to Washington facing the pressure from House Republicans — and possibly from the Treasury Department. Officials there are expected sometime in the coming days to update the public on the “X date,” before which Congress will need to pass a debt limit lift to avoid default.

    “I think once we have that date with clarity … then we’ll know with some urgency our timeframe for dealing with this challenge,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters Friday, adding: “Understand that this is a manufactured crisis that extreme MAGA Republicans are foisting on the American people.”

    In the meantime, Democrats plan to spend their time turning the GOP’s debt plan into campaign fodder, betting that fresh attacks on Republican plans to slash spending on programs like food stamps and Medicaid will hurt in the swing districts they need to flip next November.

    Many of the Republicans currently holding those battleground seats, however, say they aren’t sweating their yes votes.

    Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), who flipped a purple Long Island seat last fall, said he recently did a tele-town hall with over 13,000 callers where he asked each person to weigh in on whether they supported his position on debt: Raising the limit, but with some cutbacks to federal spending, including Covid aid.

    “Three to one, [constituents] agreed with my position,” LaLota said Friday.

    Ever since House Republicans passed its plan on Wednesday, both parties have resorted to finger-pointing to try to pin blame if negotiations go south.

    Still, the GOP bill remains a win for McCarthy, who faced a steep climb as he wrangled a deal among the disparate wings of his party with only a handful of votes to spare. By working closely with conservatives to craft a plan packed with right-flank priorities, the speaker achieved near-total unity in his bid to kick off negotiations with Biden.

    Even so, White House officials have emphasized in conversations with Democratic congressional leaders the importance of staying aligned on Biden’s no-negotiation stance. The president’s team is clearly betting that it still holds the stronger hand in the debt ceiling standoff; the White House reacted to the House GOP’s bill by issuing a flurry of statements and analyses detailing the damage it would do to the economy and popular programs.

    While Biden administration officials have explored a variety of potential alternative options for averting default, there is skepticism that any would be workable — and none are seen as preferable to Congress simply voting to raise the debt ceiling.

    The House Republican pitch that would raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion, or through March of next year — whichever comes first — setting up another fight with the White House next year. In particular, Republicans are proudest of the bill’s slashes to federal spending, including $130 billion in the upcoming fiscal year that would effectively return discretionary spending totals to nearly the same level as two years ago.

    But the task is far from done, and McCarthy still could be squeezed yet by his own party.

    Some members of the conservative Freedom Caucus are arguing that the California Republican should refuse to negotiate down at all as Democrats decide on their counter — a position that other Republicans in the conference view as irrational.

    “I don’t do red lines because there might be a different price that I might want for something, right? Put a border bill on there, change the length and times. There’s always a way to come up with something that will actually be good for the country,” Roy said of the potentially negotiable items.

    “Go ahead, Mr. President,” he added. “Go ahead, Sen. Schumer.”

    Adam Cancryn and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • White House regroups after McCarthy’s debt ceiling success

    White House regroups after McCarthy’s debt ceiling success

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    The White House and congressional Democrats are preparing to ramp up attacks on House Republicans over the bill, targeting swing-district members for endorsing policies that would strip investments in their home districts and gut funding for popular programs. Biden’s party insists it’s feeling little pressure to now deliver on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s biggest ask — a true negotiation over the debt ceiling.

    “If you reward hostage taking, it simply repeats,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a close Biden ally. “I don’t expect the president to now say, ‘Oh my gosh, you passed a bill with two votes that imposes draconian cuts across programs that most Americans would never support. Now I have to come and give you whatever you want.’”

    Biden is refusing to budge from his demand that Congress pass an unconditional increase to the debt ceiling, betting that he still holds the stronger hand in the face of an economic catastrophe. And while a smattering of moderate Democrats have begun urging the president to actually negotiate with Republicans, the majority of the party seems content with showcasing a GOP bill they see as a self-inflicted wound in swing seats.

    But Democrats’ public confidence that they’re winning the messaging war masks private concerns over how this all ultimately ends — and what damage the standoff may do to a fragile, recovering economy that’s critical to Biden’s case for re-election.

    Biden allies had expected McCarthy’s bid to pass a sweeping debt ceiling bill to fail, especially after watching him struggle to win the speakership and quickly abandon his plan to construct a full budget proposal. Even the Republicans understood the skepticism directed at them with the thin majority.

    “Nobody thought we would have this. Nobody thought we could get together and get anything to [the Senate],” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said in an interview Thursday. “If they want to say it’s not good enough, then I’m sorry that they’re doing that to the country.”

    But once it became clear that McCarthy lacked the influence to wrangle his conference, Biden’s team reasoned, Republicans would lose most of their leverage and eventually soften their demand for concessions. The White House had harbored doubts about the bill’s chances of success even after McCarthy announced plans for a vote, privately questioning whether he could win over the last handful of conservatives trying to push the bill further to the right.

    The speaker only had room to lose a handful of members. “Maybe he’ll eventually get it, but boy, who knows what they’ll have to put in it,” one adviser close to the White House said on Wednesday morning, as McCarthy raced to lock down the votes he needed.

    Yet after the speaker pulled it off, notably winning broad support from his conservative wing, the dynamics shifted. An emboldened McCarthy vowed to make the next several months far more complicated for the White House than aides had initially hoped.

    “No clean debt ceiling is going to pass the House,” McCarthy said to reporters on Wednesday as he did a victory lap.

    In the aftermath of the vote, Biden allies and advisers privately acknowledged that there’s no clear endgame to the debt ceiling standoff — and that McCarthy’s victory makes it more difficult to convince moderate Republicans to back a clean debt ceiling increase for fear of economic disaster.

    The White House signaled that Biden would now be willing to meet with McCarthy for the first time since early February — while sticking to their longstanding position that any negotiations be over the broader federal budget, and not the debt ceiling.

    “I don’t think that it should be a debt ceiling negotiation, I think that it should be a budget negotiation,” said Robert Wolf, a prominent Democratic fundraiser and former Obama-era economic adviser, characterizing it as a “thread the needle” challenge for the White House to draw the distinction.

    GOP leaders, meanwhile, were left livid that the White House had once again brushed aside their opening bid — still refusing to meet with McCarthy on the debt limit.

    “I think it’s absolutely tone deaf,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-Ga.), a McCarthy deputy who helped craft the party’s debt limit. “I could not believe he made such an arrogant statement.”

    “We’ll continue to reach out to the White House,” Graves said. But, he added with his eye on the opposite chamber: “Obviously, it’s the Senate’s ball at this point.”

    A White House official said that Biden has consistently challenged Republicans over their various proposals, including criticizing an early blueprint from the Freedom Caucus at several points, and maintained from the outset that he was open to negotiating the budget but not the debt ceiling.

    White House officials have kept in close touch with Senate leaders over their plans to maintain Biden’s no-negotiation posture, believing they can still grind enough Republicans down over time — especially as pressure and political attacks on swing-district lawmakers begin to mount. Despite McCarthy’s victory on Wednesday, Biden allies noted that he still lost four members on what was effectively a messaging bill — and needed Rep. George Santos to vote yes and bail him out of potential embarrassment.

    Still, there is recognition that the bill’s passage means Biden’s “show us your plan” dismissals will no longer cut it. Aides downplayed the idea that a meeting with Biden represents a direct reward for passing his bill, and stressed that any sitdown would include other congressional leaders.

    Biden is also unlikely to meet with Republicans on the issue until May at the earliest, with the House leaving Friday for recess until May 8. (McCarthy allies, though, had said he’s willing to fly back to D.C. for such an occasion.)

    For now, though, most Democrats seem comfortable with Biden’s position.

    “Most Americans want Republicans to take action to avoid default. They don’t want the price of that to be throwing a million people off Meals on Wheels,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who endorsed Biden early in the 2020 primary. “After that’s done, on a bill that should be about [the debt ceiling] and nothing else, you can have lots of discussions about appropriations level.”

    Those kinds of Democratic attacks — targeting the GOP’s proposed cuts to popular social programs — will likely make up much of Biden’s messaging going forward. Though White House officials remain nervous about how and when the standoff will end, Biden’s more politically minded advisers see the House bill as an early gift to a re-election campaign that will rely heavily on contrasting Biden’s agenda with the goals of the GOP’s conservative wing, two people familiar with the campaign planning said.

    Still, battleground Republicans argue that it’s Democrats, not their own party, that will face backlash if they keep sitting idle.

    Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.), who won a seat that swung towards Biden in 2020, said he is “looking for a president that actually shows up to the table.” But he also acknowledges that what Republicans passed was the first salvo in what is expected to be a tense standoff — even if other members of the right wing disagree.

    “McCarthy has been very clear: This is the first step to change, right? But you got to be in a negotiation,” Garcia said Tuesday. “You have to have another party at the table to negotiate with, so we will not negotiate with ourselves anymore.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Dems prep to hammer GOP debt bill on campaign trail

    Dems prep to hammer GOP debt bill on campaign trail

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    House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) set the tone at the beginning of the week, privately telling Democrats in a leadership meeting that the debt vote could be framed to the American people in the same way liberals responded to Republican efforts to privatize Social Security, repeal Obamacare and pass the 2017 tax cut package, according to a person familiar with his remarks.

    “We’re focused on doing the right thing by the American people, which is to make sure we avoid a dangerous default and ensure that America pays its bills,” he said Wednesday in a brief interview.

    Democratic groups are already gearing up to knock Republicans over the debt standoff. The DCCC said vulnerable Republicans were “helping build the case against themselves” and their re-election, and House Majority PAC singled out frontline Republicans who voted for the bill.

    A focus on the GOP’s debt bill and proposed cuts isn’t without its own political pitfalls. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) made clear his caucus is not responding to Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) legislation — ultimately putting the issue between President Joe Biden and the speaker after its passage in the House.

    By contrast, the 2017 tax bill was signed into law with a GOP trifecta, giving Democrats real-life consequences to use against Republicans. It also gave candidates an avenue to campaign against Republicans without tying them specifically to then-President Donald Trump.

    But what Democrats saw as effective campaign messaging in the 2022 midterms around the Jan. 6 insurrection and abortion rights could end up ranking higher on the list than potential spending cuts.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • How McCarthy mollified the right on his debt plan — for now

    How McCarthy mollified the right on his debt plan — for now

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    “The expectation was, moderates in the House have got to, at some point in time, come the way of really where I think Republicans are nationally: more conservative. Stop the spending spree,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who attended the weekly House-Senate dinner meetings at the spacious Capitol Hill townhouse of his Florida Republican colleague.

    Though McCarthy and his leadership were able to satisfy their conservative wing, it came with big sacrifices that nearly blew up their plans along the way. And it’s unclear that the fractious House GOP conference can maintain even that level of unity through the next stage of the fight — dealmaking with Democrats.

    Still, conservatives are rejoicing. Another dinner is scheduled for Wednesday night after passage. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), an attendee of the weekly Scott dinners who’s long pushed his party to take a hard line in debt negotiations, said conservatives’ early maneuvering helped strengthen their hand in the House GOP talks.

    “You can’t do this if you just stick to a position and say, ‘My way or the highway.’ You’ve got to go convince people. We put forward proposals that, I think, convinced people that this is the right approach,” Roy said, stressing that the group was working “in concert” with the rest of the GOP conference.

    Roy later helped draft the House GOP’s debt bill, a grab bag of conservative policy dreams, as part of intra-conference meetings that McCarthy’s team dubbed the “five families” meetings. That reference to “The Godfather” mafiosos aptly captures the mutual mistrust that sometimes lingers among his members.

    Yet those early weeks of maneuvering by the congressional right paid off, as outlined in interviews with more than a dozen House members, senators and aides. By the time McCarthy released his plan, many of his typically resistant conservatives were on board with a leadership spending plan that largely reflected their goals: stricter work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps, Covid aid clawbacks and across-the-board spending cuts to discretionary spending.

    The Freedom Caucus stalwarts who attended the Scott-hosted meetings — Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Matt Rosendale of Montana, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Roy — also coordinated their work with Johnson and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), all fiscal hardliners in the upper chamber. House conservatives then made their pitch to GOP leaders, who gave them unusual face time and sway over the crafting of the debt bill.

    “It largely fits what we thought was necessary to save the country in December, what we thought the speaker fight should be about,” said Russ Vought, a Trump adminisration budget official who worked closely on budget plans with the Freedom Caucus.

    Hours before the final tweaks to the plan early Wednesday morning, many Freedom Caucus members were voicing support for it at their weekly dinner meeting on Tuesday night. The exception was Biggs, who got worked up over the bill during that dinner, according to a Republican familiar with the discussions. He took to TV and likened its effect on the debt to driving off a cliff, only at a lower speed than Democrats’ plan. Biggs voted no.

    The meetings and the list

    McCarthy’s team relied on aggressive outreach to steer the massive debt bill past its narrow margin of House control. Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and his deputy, Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.), held dozens of private meetings and dinners over months that every member of the conference was invited to — including the Freedom Caucus. Leaders spent months compiling a list of every member’s debt demands, and potential objections, in order to find a middle ground.

    Last month, Emmer shared his tally with aides to from McCarthy and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.). Over the coming days, it would become a full framework; on the final day of March, Emmer was walking alongside McCarthy on their way back from a press conference on the GOP energy bill when the Minnesotan handed over his final product.

    “‘I think this is going to get you your 218,’” Emmer recalled telling McCarthy. “He looked at me and said, ‘go with it.’”

    After party leaders unveiled their debt framework last week, McCarthy invited a group of Freedom Caucus members to air their complaints in his office — and not just the members who were privately threatening to take down the bill. Those who attended later gave the speaker high marks: It was more engagement than conservatives were used to seeing.

    Perry, the House Freedom Caucus chair who also attended the Scott meetings, recalled McCarthy’s message as: “‘Look, we’re not where we need to be. We’re not where we want to be. And we got to get there.’” According to one attendee, Perry said during the meetings that it would be easier to whip up support for the bill if he were not a public yes — even though he supported it at the time.

    Even Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla), long one of McCarthy’s biggest antagonists, said he felt leadership was listening. “The leadership just picked up the House Freedom Caucus plan and helped us convert it into the legislative text,” he said. (Gaetz later voted no.) The plan quickly picked up support from swing district first-term members to veteran appropriators to fiscal hawks.

    “We thought we were golden,” said one senior Republican involved in the deliberations. “We were in a good spot.”

    …Then more demands

    That goodwill didn’t last, however. Ultimately, a smaller group of Freedom Caucus members added one more demand to the pile — axing major provisions of Democrats’ marquee bill as part of the Republican plan. It was no simple tweak, as McCarthy and his team repeatedly explained to those disgruntled conservatives.

    Making that change, as leadership predicted, sparked a new fight within the conference as Midwestern Republicans argued that expanding the repeal of last year’s Democratic bill would shortchange their home states’ thriving ethanol industry and have little chance of actually becoming law.

    After two days of insisting he wouldn’t bend, McCarthy ultimately relented to the eight Midwesterners. GOP leaders made a key change to satisfy the entire Iowa delegation, as well as members from states like Minnesota and Missouri. Some Republicans questioned why one of their own leaders, the Minnesotan Emmer, allowed the language to be added in the first place.

    “If I weren’t the whip, I would have been the loudest voice of the bunch,” Emmer said in a Wednesday interview, praising the change and noted he’d been unaware of the problem that existed in the bill: “I didn’t realize this until they told me yesterday, that they had incorrectly included pre-existing law.”

    GOP leaders couldn’t stop the kowtowing there, as more rogue conservatives made their own threats. McCarthy was ultimately forced to throw another bone to the right, accelerating the bill’s cuts to federal food stamps and other benefits.

    ‘No changes’

    Party leaders also fielded requests for a huge array of demands for floor votes on bills and holding specific hearings that had nothing to do with debt. McCarthy promised Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) that she could take the lead on a balanced budget amendment bill with his support — not to mention offering to give her a floor vote on bills related to women’s access to reproductive health and child care services, as well as an active shooter alert bill.

    McCarthy met with Mace on Wednesday as she remained opposed, one of a half-dozen meetings the speaker held with his members this week in a mad dash to passage. Rosendale and Scott authored a joint op-ed on Wednesday backing the bill — a sign that even the staunchest conservatives were now on board.

    “I’ve never voted for a debt ceiling increase,” Scott said. “To do one, we’ve got to get some structural change.”

    The horse-trading over the GOP’s initial debt plan may be nothing compared to what comes next. Sometime before mid-June, Republicans will need to pass a debt plan that can actually become law with the backing of a Democratic Senate and White House.

    Already, some Freedom Caucus members are urging McCarthy not to budge.

    Speaking to reporters after addressing his colleagues at a private Wednesday meeting, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) warned McCarthy not to “come back when they call 911 at the last hour, which any negotiator will do — run it out and say the sky is falling.”

    “No changes to the bill,” Norman later recalled telling the speaker. If the debt crisis becomes an economic disaster, he added, Democrats should “be responsible.”



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • House GOP passes its debt bill, upping pressure on Biden

    House GOP passes its debt bill, upping pressure on Biden

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    And it was a hard-fought victory, at that. The conference had been in talks over the bill for months, yet McCarthy was still negotiating with on-the-fence members shortly before the vote. Still, GOP lawmakers cheered the bill’s passage, hoping it will give them some leverage to force leading Democrats to back down from assertions they would not negotiate at all over the debt limit.

    “I think everybody is focused on solving this problem and finally getting the president … to come to the table,” said Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), adding that Republicans want to give McCarthy the “opportunity to go and negotiate with the president.”

    Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Ken Buck (Colo.), Tim Burchett (Tenn.) and Matt Gaetz (Fla.) were the Republicans who opposed the bill, along with all Democrats.

    It’s still far from clear that the House GOP plan will change the calculus either at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue or across the Capitol with Senate Democrats. Both have stressed for months, along with their less influential House colleagues, that they want a “clean” debt ceiling increase, with no spending cuts attached.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer lambasted McCarthy ahead of the vote on Wednesday, accusing him of having “capitulated to the hard right once again” as he worked to lock down the votes to pass the debt plan.

    “It’s a bill that might as well be called the Default On America Act. Because that’s exactly what it is — DOA, dead on arrival,” Schumer said.

    The House Republican bill combines across-the-board spending cuts with other conservative proposals, including stricter rules for social safety net programs and energy production incentives. But after vowing for days that they wouldn’t open the bill for negotiations, worried it would create a tidal wave of demands, Republican leadership cut a middle-of-the-night deal to try to win over two critical holdout groups: Midwesterners and conservatives.

    For Midwestern members, GOP leadership agreed to kill changes to incentives structures for renewable diesel, second generation biofuel, carbon dioxide sequestration and biodiesel. For conservatives, they beefed up the work requirements and sped up the implementation timeline. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who flipped to backing the bill on Wednesday, also said McCarthy committed to working on balancing the budget in a conversation with her.

    House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) acknowledged that his conservative members weren’t sold on all the bill’s provisions but argued that passing the proposal was crucial to keeping Republicans at the table.

    “It is not perfect. It’s a step in the right direction. We’ve got to be in the arena and stay on offense,” Perry said.

    The next phase won’t get any easier for Republicans, though, who barely scraped by this time on a 217-215 vote. McCarthy eventually needs to cut a deal with Biden and Senate Democrats that somehow would also win over both the centrist and conservative factions of his conference.

    ”It’s gonna have to be a conservative package if it’s going to win the support of the Republican conference, but I don’t think it serves anyone’s interest by talking about red lines right now,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), the chair of the business-oriented Main Street Caucus.

    Driving the debt-limit talks is still relatively new for House Republicans, who largely left it up to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to negotiate agreements on the debt ceiling during the first two years of the Biden administration. Those deals sparked fierce pushback not only from House Republicans but also Senate conservatives.

    And Republican senators are warning they aren’t preparing to step into the breach again, at least not yet. Plus, it’s far from clear that a Senate GOP negotiated deal would even find favor in the more raucous House GOP conference.

    The House bill “forces the administration to come to the table,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said Wednesday. “The pressure really ought to be on the White House.”

    Sarah Ferris and Burgess Everett contributed to this report.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Senate still not a savior in debt crisis

    Senate still not a savior in debt crisis

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    Tillis and his 48 Senate GOP colleagues are nonetheless praying that Speaker Kevin McCarthy can muscle through his opening pitch to give their party a modicum of leverage over the coming weeks. A McCarthy failure would make it much harder for 10 or more Republican senators to extract any concessions at all from the president as a condition for raising the borrowing limit.

    Yet basically every Senate Democrat, save West Virginia centrist Joe Manchin, says there’s no negotiation to be had no matter what transpires in the lower chamber this week. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declared the House’s proposal the “DOA Act” for its grim prospects of becoming law and reiterated that he would only accept a “clean” debt ceiling hike.

    The yawning gap between the parties in the Senate highlights the high degree of uncertainty over just how Congress and the White House are going to get out of this particular jam. It’s undoubtedly the most consequential topic of 2023 and perhaps the entire two-year session, with massive economic and political stakes for both parties heading into a presidential election year.

    Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) pointedly argued that the House’s GOP’s eleventh-hour horse-trading alone invalidates their negotiating position: “This very public display of dysfunction is a clear indication of how disastrous a negotiation would be. I mean, these guys can’t negotiate amongst themselves.”

    Murphy advised House Republicans to pick a fiscal austerity fight, if they want one, during talks over funding the government in the fall: “They’ll lose that fight with the American public, but at least it’ll do a lot less damage,” he said. “My sense is a lot of Senate Republicans think the House strategy is super dumb and politically toxic.”

    A growing number of House Democrats want Biden and McCarthy to sit down and negotiate, but that will likely depend on what can pass the House this week. On the other side of the aisle, moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) advised Biden to “take a good look at” what the speaker can pass, then start haggling.

    Whenever that phase starts — if it does at all — all eyes will be on the Senate and its track record of getting Washington out of jams with bipartisan solutions. Yet right now there’s very little cooking in the chamber’s dealmaking kitchen.

    “We should be able to sit down and talk like grown-ups,” said Manchin, who has met with McCarthy and faces a difficult reelection campaign. “Everybody should be involved.”

    The current standoff is inextricably linked to the precedent its resolution might set for the next debt limit fight. Republicans think they can’t fold on this debt crisis without inciting a rebellion by their base, while Democrats believe opening the door to negotiation creates an endless loop of face-offs with the GOP.

    Senate GOP leaders bent twice in 2021 to avoid a debt limit breach, and Democrats envision that ultimately that will happen once again. But the Republican-controlled House’s actions thus far have made even that result hard to imagine, as McCarthy digs in on a matter that could determine the future of his speakership.

    This explains why Senate Republican leaders are continuing to squash any possibility that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell might be ready to step in and cut a deal amid the staring contest between McCarthy and Biden, who have not met on the topic in nearly three months.

    Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said her party is “gonna continue to support what the House has done,” adding that Schumer might step in after the House votes “but I think it’s still going to be McCarthy and Biden” agreeing on a debt solution.

    While Republicans worry about allowing another clean debt ceiling increase and sparking another internal fight, Democrats fear a damaging redux of 2011 — when the tea party-influenced House GOP played hardball with then-President Barack Obama and Vice President Biden. The two parties eventually cut a deal to extend the debt ceiling which culminated in significant spending caps.

    In retrospect, Democrats view that episode as a mistake that cannot be repeated. Rather than entertaining dealmaking with McCarthy, centrist Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said simply: “The solution is to not default on the debt.” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) was just as succinct: “I don’t think there’ll be negotiations on a budget.”

    “It’s difficult to understand what the House is going to do. They can’t pass a signable bill unless they bring Democrats into the process. So I think on our side, we’ll try to work with Republicans to see what we can do,” Cardin said, adding that McConnell “understands the seriousness of this.”

    McConnell, however, once again aligned with McCarthy this week and suggested Biden join the speaker at “the grown-ups table.” The Senate GOP leader has taken great pains to show little daylight with the California Republican after a number of splits last year raised questions about how the two men would govern their party together.

    So despite Democrats’ hopes, there’s little sign McConnell or his lieutenants are ready to lift a finger at this point.

    The House bill “forces the administration to come to the table,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said. “The pressure really ought to be on the White House.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Here’s who McCarthy needs to convince for his debt bill

    Here’s who McCarthy needs to convince for his debt bill

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    Locked in a months-long stalemate with the president, McCarthy has said this week’s House GOP plan is intended to bring Biden to the negotiating table. But first, Republicans need to pass their measure — with just four votes to spare on the floor.

    “If there are any last-minute concerns, the speaker and his team know who those are and he’s addressing those,” Republican Study Committee Chair Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) said, predicting the conference would come together in time to vote Wednesday.

    Here are the main blocs of objectors that Republican leaders have grappled with over the last 24 hours.

    Conservatives

    McCarthy received a surprising show of support from a corner of the conference that is known to upend him at every turn: The House Freedom Caucus.

    On Wednesday morning, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) stood before the conference and tried to sell the bill to his colleagues, explaining why he was supporting it and encouraging them to unanimously support it. In response, the opinionated Roy received a large round of applause — which one Republican member, speaking on condition of anonymity, cheekily noted is not the reaction that the gadfly Texan usually gets.

    But Roy wasn’t alone. Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) spoke of the bill positively, as did Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), and Bob Good (R-Va.). All five of these members who stood up and spoke Wednesday morning were among the 20 who initially opposed McCarthy as speaker at the start of this Congress.

    Yet the Freedom Caucus is hardly mollified for good. Its members are warning the speaker that they don’t want to see him bend when the Democratic-controlled Senate overhauls what the House GOP plans to send across the Capitol.

    “I told [McCarthy] at the mic: ‘Don’t come back when they call 911 at the last hour, which any negotiator will do — run it out and say the sky is falling. No changes to the bill,” said Norman, before adding that Democrats should “be responsible” for any resulting economic disaster.

    Midwesterners

    In a major win, GOP leaders have successfully locked down the votes of nearly a dozen Midwestern holdouts who had objected to parts of the bill affecting ethanol producers in their home states.

    Roughly eight Midwestern Republicans — hailing primarily from Iowa, as well as Wisconsin, Minnesota and Missouri — had privately threatened to oppose the bill if leadership didn’t roll back their plans to cut benefits for certain biofuels. The latest plan does still repeal tax credits for biodiesel and some other clean fuels, but GOP leaders revised the measure so that companies already locked into contracts can still use the perk.

    All of those initially skeptical Republicans now appeared to be on board.

    “In the spirit of Caitlin Clark, we’re going to fight, fight, fight for Iowa. And I think we came out ahead on this,” Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa) said, name-checking this year’s March Madness basketball superstar from his home state.

    Wild cards

    Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) is still in the “no” column, for now, arguing the bill doesn’t do enough to pay down the debt and kvetching that McCarthy’s allies missed a meeting with him that was scheduled for Tuesday.

    “It doesn’t have anything to do with them not showing up. I just don’t like being taken for granted,” Burchett said. “I waited 33 minutes, and that is enough.”

    But the Tennessee Republican is heaping praise on McCarthy, whom he said has the unenviable job of trying to piece together 218 votes from a razor-thin conference. And a person familiar with internal conversations said Burchett’s colleagues were still trying to work on him during the conference meeting — though he left the room reiterating that he was a no.

    Burchett isn’t alone in his concerns about the debt. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said Wednesday that she is “leaning no” but that she is in talks with leadership and “the ball is in their court.”

    Meanwhile, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) is playing coy about how he will vote but said he was frustrated by the middle-of-the-night deal-cutting, and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) remains a “lean no.” Leadership did change the bill to incorporate Gaetz’s demand for a speedier implementation of beefed-up work requirements for certain federal assistance, but Biggs is pushing to return spending levels to fiscal year 2019 levels.

    Meredith Lee Hill contributed.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Nearly 200 House Democrats have signed onto a letter echoing President Joe Biden’s call for a clean debt ceiling hike.

    Nearly 200 House Democrats have signed onto a letter echoing President Joe Biden’s call for a clean debt ceiling hike.

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    The letter comes as the House votes as soon as Wednesday on Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s opening debt limit offer, with spending concessions attached.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )