Russia’s year-long war in Ukraine has led to thousands of casualties, millions of refugees and billions of dollars in damages to the country’s economy, environment and infrastructure.
At home, Russian President Vladimir Putin is pushing the narrative of a just war against the West and crushing dissenting voices, while his country’s economy feels the bite of sanctions — though their effect has been more nuanced than expected. Yet, despite their proclaimed support for Ukraine, some European countries have been reluctant to cut ties with Moscow.
Across the EU, citizens have been hurt by skyrocketing energy prices, and all the while trade flows with Russia have transformed in a matter of months.
Here are 12 months of war summed up, in figures and charts.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
In addition, majority non-white neighborhoods accounted for more applications per capita than did majority-white ZIP codes.
Borrowers in blue states were generally more likely to sign up for the program than borrowers in red states, where many Republican officials have railed against its legality and cost. Congressional districts won by Democrats averaged about 57,000 applications for debt relief while GOP-won districts averaged 50,000 applications.
The new details come as Biden’s debt relief program, which offers up to $20,000 of loan forgiveness, remains stuck in legal limbo. The Supreme Court later this month will hear oral arguments in two cases brought by Republican-led states and a conservative group, which argue that Biden’s debt cancellation is illegal.
POLITICO examined the ZIP codes associated with each of approximately 23.6 million applications for Biden’s debt relief that were received by the Education Department between Oct. 14 and Nov. 11, when the program was frozen in response to a court ruling. The department provided the data in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
POLITICO’s analysis matched application ZIP codes with U.S. Census Bureau estimates of per-capita income, college attendance and racial demographics, as well as the results of the 2022 midterm elections.
Lower-income areas applied at a higher rate
Critics of Biden’s debt relief program, including many Republicans, have decried it as a handout to wealthy Americans who don’t need the help. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C,), who has led the GOP charge against the plan as chair of the House education committee, has blasted the program as a “transfer of wealth from working class Americans to privileged college graduates.”
The White House, meanwhile, claims that about 90 percent of the benefits will go to families earning less than $75,000. When he announced the program, Biden said it was targeted to “working and middle-class people hit especially hard during the pandemic.”
It’s impossible to know the precise income of the tens of millions of borrowers who applied for debt relief because the Education Department didn’t collect that information. On the application, borrowers were required only to self-certify that their annual income fell below the program’s $125,000 limit for individuals and $250,000 for couples.
The per-capita income of the ZIP codes where applicants live is one proxy for estimating their income. Most people, however, earn more or less than the average of their neighborhood.
POLITICO’s analysis found that more than 98 percent of applications came from ZIP codes where the average income is under $75,000. About two-thirds were from neighborhoods with an average income below $40,000.
Applications from higher-income ZIP codes were more rare. Less than 1 percent of the total applications came from the wealthiest ZIP codes where per-capita income is more than $100,000 — roughly corresponding to the portion of Americans who live in these ZIP codes.
Applications from lower-income areas comprised a greater share of the population of adults who attended at least some college compared to applications from higher-income areas.
For example, about 60 percent of those college-educated adults live in neighborhoods where the per-capita income is less than $40,000. But those areas accounted for a greater share, 66 percent, of the applications for student debt.
There were more applications per capita in majority non-white neighborhoods
The NAACP, Congressional Black Caucus and other proponents of student debt cancellation have argued it will help narrow the nation’s persistent racial wealth gap.
Overall, about 15 million applications came from majority-white neighborhoods, while about 8.6 million applications were from ZIP codes that are majority non-white, the POLITICO analysis found. But the number of applications per capita was higher among majority non-white ZIP codes than it was in majority white ZIP codes.
In Georgia, for example, about 43 percent of the total population lives in ZIP codes that are majority non-white. But those areas accounted for about 54 percent of the student debt relief applications.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) was one of the most prominent Democrats pushing Biden to cancel student debt and ran on the issue during his close reelection bid last fall — even as Democrats in other close races distanced themselves from the program.
Several Atlanta-area ZIP codes, the state’s Democratic strongholds, had particularly high volumes of applications. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) represents the eastern suburbs of Atlanta in a majority-Black district that had among the highest number of applicants of any congressional district in the country.
“My district is a prime example of why the relief is so important,” he said in an interview, noting that about half of his constituents have a bachelor’s degree but “many others” have debt but no degree. He noted the median household income of the district, which is about $69,000, according to the Census Bureau.
“That’s not wealthy,” Johnson said, pushing back on GOP criticism of the program. “That is doing everything you can to keep your head above water.”
Politically speaking, Johnson said, canceling student debt “was a powerful lever” to drive Democratic turnout across Georgia last fall. “I think it was one of the reasons that people turned out to vote for Raphael Warnock” even as other statewide races, notably the gubernatorial contest, went for Republicans, he said.
“People are looking forward to that relief,” Johnson said. “They know that it came from national Democrats, that it was a Biden initiative.”
The debt relief program is more popular in blue states
The White House launched the application for student debt relief during the 2022 midterm election campaign, and Biden promoted the application in several speeches in the weeks leading up to Election Day.
The applications skewed toward congressional districts won by Democrats, according to POLITICO’s estimates. About 52 percent of applications came from Democrat-won districts; 48 percent were from GOP-won districts.
In the typical Democratic district, the number of applications was a greater share of the population that attended college than it was in the typical Republican district.
Nationally, about 63 percent of federal student loan borrowers estimated to be eligible for relief had applied for the program or were in line to automatically receive relief, according to the POLITICO analysis of Education Department data.
That sign-up rate was higher in many blue states where Democrats heavily promoted the administration’s debt relief application. In Vermont and Massachusetts, for example, about 68 percent of eligible borrowers raised their hand for relief.
Many GOP states, by contrast, had participation rates that were lower than the national rate. That includes Republican-led states where officials are suing to block the plan, such as Arkansas (57 percent) and Missouri (59 percent). Wyoming had the lowest share of eligible borrowers: about 55 percent apply for the program.
Methodology
This is a snapshot of about 23.6 million out of a total of 25 million applications because the Education Department has not yet — or is unable to — match the remaining applications with ZIP codes of borrowers, or has masked applications counts in ZIP codes where fewer than 100 applications were filed. There may be duplicates in this pool of applications if people submitted multiple applications.
The data analysis was based on ZIP code-aggregated data provided by the Education Department. We crossed the ZIP codes with approximately equivalent Census Bureau-defined ZIP code tabulation areas using a crosswalk compiled by the Health Resources and Services Administration.
Demographic data used for this analysis is mostly from the 2021 Census Bureau American Community Survey five-year estimates. In some cases, the surveys did not provide median income estimates for certain ZCTAs.
To align the ZCTAs with congressional districts, we used the Geocorr tool created by the Missouri Census Data Center. Because ZCTAs sometimes overlap congressional districts, the portion of applications assigned to those districts were weighted by the portion of population living in each congressional district in these estimates.
The Education Department has determined these applications were submitted by real federal student loan borrowers. It matched applications received on StudentAid.gov last fall to ZIP codes it has on file for student loan borrowers. It has not yet determined that these borrowers actually qualify for relief (whether they have the correct type of federal student loan, whether they took out the loan before July 2022, etc.). In other words, they are just applications, not approvals. Before the program was shut down, the department had begun issuing approvals and approved approximately 16 million borrowers for relief by Nov. 11.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Hyderabad: Discussing the Union Budget 2023, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday slammed Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s (KCR) for calling the Centre’s vision of a 5 trillion dollar economy, a joke.
She further took a jab at the state’s economy and said that Telangana’s debt has mounted significantly in the last 7-8 years.
Speaking at the Telangana Legislative Assembly on Sunday, KCR had said that the target of a 5 trillion size economy was a ‘joke’ and a very low target. He had also said that while PM Modi won in the parliamentary elections of 2014, the country lost.
“Ex-PM Manmohan Singh worked hard and spoke less, it’s the opposite case with the current Prime Minister,” the Telangana CM had said.
Responding to his comments on the economy, Sitharaman said “CM garu don’t joke and let’s all speak about it (the Budget) with responsibility.”
“How can you tell that aim of 5 trillion economy is a joke? Every state should contribute towards it. Who are you laughing upon, the people? In 2014, debt of Telangana was Rs 60,000 crores, but in the last 7-8 years it has crossed Rs.3 lakh crores,” she added.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Wednesday said the US treasury department will exhaust its ability to pay all its bills sometime between July and September, unless the current $31.4tn cap on borrowing is raised or suspended.
In a report issued alongside its annual budget outlook, the non-partisan CBO cautioned that a historic federal debt default could occur before July if revenue flowing into the treasury in April – when most Americans typically submit annual income tax filings – lags expectations.
The pace of incoming revenue, coupled with the performance of the US economy in the coming months, makes it difficult for government officials to predict the exact “X-date”, when the treasury could begin to default on many debt payments without action by Congress.
“If the debt limit is not raised or suspended before the extraordinary measures are exhausted, the government would be unable to pay its obligations fully,” the CBO report said. “As a result, the government would have to delay making payments for some activities, default on its debt obligations, or both.”
Separately, the CBO said annual US budget deficits will average $2tn between 2024 and 2033, approaching pandemic-era records by the end of the decade – a forecast likely to stoke Republican demands for spending cuts.
Meanwhile, the CBO estimated an unemployment rate of 4.7% this year, far above the current 3.4%.
CBO director Phillip Swagel attributed the rise to higher interest rates that particularly are hitting the housing industry, coupled with slowing business investment.
The sobering analysis reflects the full impact of recent spending legislation, including investments in clean energy and semiconductors and higher military spending, along with higher healthcare, pension and interest costs. It assumes no change in tax and spending laws over the next decade.
“Over the long term, our projections suggest that changes in fiscal policy must be made to address the rising costs of interest and mitigate other adverse consequences of high and rising debt,” Swagel said in a statement.
The need to raise the debt ceiling is driven by past spending laws and tax cuts, some enacted under Joe Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump.
Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, want to withhold a debt limit increase until Democrats agree to deep spending cuts. Democrats in turn say the debt limit should not be “held hostage” to Republican tactics over federal spending.
After hitting the $31.4tn borrowing cap on 19 January, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the treasury can keep up payments on debt and federal benefits and make other outlays at least through 5 June using cash receipts and extraordinary cash management measures.
Year of the debt limit
So far in 2023, not a day has gone by on Capitol Hill without lawmakers jousting over the debt limit, as Democrats press for a quick, clean increase in treasury borrowing authority and Republicans insist on first nailing down significant reductions in future government spending.
Social security and Medicare, the government’s popular pension plan and its healthcare program for Americans ages 65 and older, are at the center of the debt limit and government funding debate, as both parties also jockey to define the contours of the 2024 presidential and congressional election campaigns.
“There has been a Republican drumbeat to cut social security and Medicare,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, told reporters on Tuesday.
Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has labored, without much success so far, to smother such talk.
“Let me say one more time. There is no agenda on the part of Senate Republicans to revisit Medicare or social security. Period,” he said at a news conference.
Most Americans do not closely follow Washington’s debt-ceiling saga, but they still worry it could hurt their finances, according to a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll conducted between 6-13 February.
In that poll, 55% of US adults said they have heard little or nothing about the debate, but three-quarters of respondents said Congress must reach a deal because defaulting would add to their families’ financial stress, largely through potentially higher borrowing costs.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Republicans are insisting on spending cuts and potentially other concessions as Congress girds for a fight over the imminent need to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, while Biden’s party pushes for a clean increase. And the scene in the House chamber grew more tense as, in a nod to those nascent negotiations, Biden said some GOP lawmakers were playing with fire on the nation’s bills.
“Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans … want Medicare and Social Security to sunset,” Biden said, to more sustained boos from GOP lawmakers.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), sitting in the far back of the chamber and dressed in a white fur coat, leaped to her feet and appeared to yell, “Liar!” (A shout of “bullshit” was also audible from the floor during the debt back-and-forth, though it was not clear whether that came from Greene or another member.)
In response to the frustration, Biden acknowledged that Speaker Kevin McCarthy and others in the GOP have declared they won’t touch entitlement programs during the debt talks — in fact, the California Republican delivered a preliminary rebuttal to the president’s speech that pointedly stated as much.
But Biden went on to reiterate that other Republicans have sent a different message, viewing changes to Social Security and Medicare as up for discussion. As he quipped to Republican lawmakers that “so, we agree” on not touching either program, some GOP members appeared to cheer in affirmation.
Asked after the speech about the cry of “liar” toward the president, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) pointed to “a number of things” Biden said as underpinning it. “He tries to keep spreading this false narrative about getting rid of Social Security and Medicare,” Scalise said.
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) described the combative episode more bluntly: “The president was trying to score political points, despite the fact that Republican leadership has made it clear that Medicare and Social Security benefits are off the table. Republicans made clear their dissatisfaction with his ploy.”
And soon after Biden left the chamber, he tweeted what appeared to be a fresh challenge to Republicans on Social Security and Medicare, as the GOP prepares its fiscal blueprint: “Look: I welcome all converts. But now, let’s see your budget.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“If they can’t get anywhere, there are a number of choices, right?” Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) said of Biden and McCarthy. But he’s not ready to put on his bipartisan gang gear yet: “I’m a little bit more fiscally conservative than some Democrats. But this isn’t where you negotiate that.”
If McCarthy and Biden’s talks flounder, that would seem to leave centrists in a strong position. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has sidelined himself and indicated that McCarthy’s in the lead for their party, however, which means his moderates are also taking themselves out of the game to avoid undercutting the speaker. In short, don’t expect one of the Senate’s often-active bipartisan groups to swoop in just yet.
Still, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has met with McCarthy and a handful of senators are informally chatting about possible debt-limit solutions. Other centrists are moving more formally: A group of House moderates met for the first time last week to discuss escape hatches if Congress gets too close to busting through the debt limit, expected to potentially hit in June.
Their discussions, according to three people familiar with them, included the long-shot option known as a discharge petition — which requires a majority of the House to force a debt-limit vote against the speaker’s wishes.
“The goal is to not have that,” Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) said of any potential fallback plans, before adding: “We’re in a dire situation.”
It will only grow more dire as the weather heats up, and with it the risk of default. And don’t put it past Congress to kick the can a little further, possibly tying the debt deadline to the expiration of government funding at the end of September.
But when it comes time for a deal, plenty of players are waiting in the wings to assist or supplant the president and speaker.
The Senate Gang
During the last Congress, a roving group of Senate centrists cut a series of seemingly improbable deals on same-sex marriage, infrastructure and gun safety. Right now, there’s no such movement on the debt ceiling.
But that may well change. And some senators are open to establishing a group to wrestle weighty fiscal issues — once the debt ceiling is raised.
“I’d be more than happy to do that, truthfully. That’s what it’s going to take. Take the debt limit stuff off the table, because it’s playing with fire,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.). “I am more than fine with deficit reduction. It has to be separate from the debt ceiling.”
Though there’s a real possibility that’s where Congress ultimately ends up, few want to admit it now. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a frequent member of the chamber’s bipartisan policymaking gangs, said “the Senate is not really talking about getting involved at this point.”
“This is not a gang discussion,” said Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a member of her chamber’s Democratic leadership. “Not on the question of whether or not we’re going to crash the economy.”
The big reason there’s no gang right now: Most Democrats argue that a debt ceiling increase shouldn’t be subject to negotiations, period. And Republicans believe that their position will erode if centrists start breaking ranks with the current GOP position of leaving things to McCarthy.
Rogue House dealmakers
House moderates have eyed a possible major role in the volatile debt talks ever since the GOP’s flimsy four-vote majority was sealed in November.
Now that there’s an empowered bloc of deal-making moderates in both parties, the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus is edging its way into the talks. While the full group has yet to meet, a smaller band of its leaders gathered last week to begin preliminary discussions.
People familiar with the meeting made clear that the Problem Solvers have no intention of getting ahead of their respective party leaders, but pointed to early conversations about possible spending caps or broader fiscal reform that could prove valuable when negotiations kick off in earnest.
“We should just do a clean debt limit. That may not be realistic given where Republicans are,” said Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), who drafted a bill in recent years with now-Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) that proposed several ideas for Congress to avert semi-annual debt brinkmanship.
And if the McCarthy-Biden talks flame out, Peters said this bipartisan House cohort wants to be prepared: “There’s a group of people here who want to be prepared.”
Some Problem Solvers expect the group will ultimately launch a dedicated internal effort to tackle the debt, as they previously have with other policy ideas, such as infrastructure. One big topic likely to be discussed — how to force a debt ceiling bill to the floor that doesn’t have uniform GOP support.
The idea of a discharge petition is getting floated, though some Hill aides and budget experts see that route as too slow and unwieldy to accommodate a rapidly-changing default deadline. Some members are also discussing procedural gambits that would take less time to bring a bill to the floor, such as a House motion for a “previous question,” which has far more flexible rules.
Mitch McConnell
The Senate GOP leader successfully negotiated a debt ceiling detente with then-Vice President Biden more than a decade ago, yielding a decade of spending caps that squeezed both defense and domestic spending. McConnell also struck a 2021 deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that allowed Democrats to advance a $2.5 trillion debt ceiling hike with a simple majority.
But his work on that debt deal, as well as December’s government funding agreement, spent big political capital and earned him some criticism. So despite McConnell’s vaunted pedigree of negotiating with Biden, he is currently declining to step into negotiations and leaving things to McCarthy — who criticized several bills that McConnell supported last Congress.
“There’s no way that the House is going to accept something that 60 senators vote on on a bipartisan basis,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “That’s [McConnell’s] position.”
Some believe that, as Republicans float a variety of fiscal concessions with no clear plan or unifying potential — including another set of spending caps and debt-to-GDP spending targets — that the GOP leader may once again have to step in. McConnell and Biden have maintained their uniquely productive relationship through this year, appearing together at an infrastructure event last month in Kentucky.
“I cannot imagine there’d be a major deal here and Mitch McConnell isn’t going to be part of it,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.). “I suspect he’ll be involved in negotiations when he thinks it’s appropriate.”
But not yet. Even talking about McConnell’s involvement “would be damaging to” McCarthy during talks with the president, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said: “I think we’re better off sticking with him as the lead sled dog.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
In a statement, the White House called the meeting a “frank and straightforward dialogue” that represented the first of many conversations.
“President Biden made clear that, as every other leader in both parties in Congress has affirmed, it is their shared duty not to allow an unprecedented and economically catastrophic default,” the White House said. “It is not negotiable or conditional.”
The White House has insisted that it will not negotiate over the debt ceiling, warning that an extended stalemate could spark a financial crisis and push the U.S. to the brink of default.
But Republicans view the debt ceiling as an opportunity to extract concessions from an administration dealing with a divided Congress for the first time in Biden’s presidency. While those stances did not appear to change during their closed-door meeting, McCarthy expressed newfound optimism that the two would eventually be able to clinch a deal.
“I would like to see if we can come to an agreement long before the deadline,” he said. “We have different perspectives. But we both laid out some of our vision of where we want to get to, and I believe after laying both out, I can see where we can find common ground.”
McCarthy declined to detail what specific proposals he discussed with Biden, outside of saying he believes the pair can eventually strike a potential two-year funding deal.
But he reiterated the GOP is determined to rein in government spending as part of an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. It remains unclear what programs McCarthy proposes targeting for funding reductions, and the White House has shown little willingness to enter formal negotiations until he does so.
Biden officials in the run-up to the meeting privately discussed the potential for a compromise that heads off a debt ceiling crisis while separately granting McCarthy small concessions that would allow him to save face with his party — such as creating a commission to study and propose future spending reforms.
But the White House is unwilling to touch entitlement spending or gut programs central to Biden’s agenda. And while McCarthy has tamped down early talk of cuts to Medicare and Social Security, he acknowledged that the two sides remain far apart and appeared to dismiss the idea of a commission.
“I don’t need a commission to tell me where there’s waste, fraud and abuse,” McCarthy said. “We don’t need a commission to tell us to do our job that the American public elected us to do.”
That means that any agreement the White House might consider supporting at this early stage is unlikely to appeal to the GOP.
“Every indication is that absent radical budget cuts and slashing some of the programs that Biden championed, the right wing of the House Republican caucus is not going to go along,” said one Biden economic adviser. “McCarthy has not yet demonstrated that he can get the maximalists in his party to agree to anything other than the maximal position.”
Key to the discussions, the White House believes, is establishing some sort of baseline about what type of bill McCarthy could actually get through the House. The GOP has yet to consolidate behind a set of demands, and the White House is reluctant to lend McCarthy any pre-emptive help as he tries to wrangle his fractious caucus.
“We can’t negotiate with ourselves,” said Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), a member of GOP leadership, even as other Republicans have pressed for more clarity on the conference’s strategy. “The president has to negotiate with us.”
The White House also viewed this initial meeting as the first of many over the next several months; an opportunity for both sides to size each other up and establish a starting point for talks that could drag well into the spring and summer.
Though Biden and McCarthy talked occasionally during the Obama era, the two men are not close. The early sitdown, some aides suggested, is part of an effort by Biden to build a relationship with a House speaker he’ll need to work with on an array of priorities over the next two years.
“What you’re not going to see is either party move their position,” the Biden adviser said. “This is the meeting where folks scope things out and get a sense of where everybody is.”
Senior White House officials sought to reinforce their position ahead of time, writing in a memo Tuesday that Biden would press McCarthy to commit to avoiding a debt default and to releasing a budget showing where the GOP wants to rein in funding.
“Any serious conversation about economic and fiscal policy needs to start with a clear understanding of the participants’ goals and proposals,” top economic adviser Brian Deese and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young wrote.
The White House plans to release its budget proposal on March 9, offering what officials hope will provide a clear contrast with Republicans’ demands and sharpen the public debate over lifting the debt ceiling.
The government hit its borrowing limit in January, and estimates it may only be able to pay its bills into June without an increase. The U.S. has never intentionally defaulted, and Congress in recent years routinely voted to increase its borrowing limit under both the Trump and Biden administrations. Pointing to that track record, Democrats have insisted on passing a clean increase yet again, arguing the need to avoid economic catastrophe is too great to haggle over the debt ceiling.
The last time the U.S. came close to default, in 2011, the standoff rattled global financial markets and prompted a downgrade of the country’s credit rating. Should the government breach the debt ceiling this time, economists predict it would trigger an immediate recession and tank the stock market.
Still, House Republicans have relished a fight over the debt ceiling, fueled by a conservative faction that blocked McCarthy’s path to the speakership until he made a series of commitments that included using the debt ceiling to force spending cuts.
That stance has unnerved Democrats, who question McCarthy’s ability to negotiate on behalf of a GOP majority that includes lawmakers who have already indicated they won’t agree to raise the debt limit no matter what deal the two sides strike.
“I have a pretty strong suspicion that once the American people see what the Republican MAGA fringe is up to here, and what their hostage-taking demands are, there will be a sudden collapse [in support],” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who chairs the chamber’s budget committee.
Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
But the GOP is also entertaining hope that the president shows a shred of openness to taking its demands seriously, even as very few of its members specify what they want Biden to negotiate on. A rare Republican with a concrete proposal was Texas Rep. Chip Roy, who on Tuesday called directly for federal spending caps.
“It’s a lot of work. We got to do it. We’re in a big hole because of irresponsibility on both sides of the aisle,” said Roy, who has also specified that the cuts shouldn’t touch the Pentagon’s budget or programs like Medicare or Social Security. “But there is a path, and we ought to sit down and figure it out.”
That growing fiscal slash-and-burn pressure from the GOP’s right flank leaves both parties in a state of high-stakes uncertainty as Congress veers towards a summertime cliff that draws parallels to the Obama administration’s flirtation with debt calamity more than a decade ago. And this time around, Biden’s lead negotiating partner won’t be his generational counterpart Mitch McConnell but the younger speaker from California, who brings a more Trump-friendly conservatism and less predictable style to the table.
McCarthy will also be speaking for a conference where fiscal hawks hold significant sway and spending caps are gaining momentum as a proposed solution. That outcome would be similar to the 2011 debt limit standoff, which ended with Congress enacting strict spending limits that technically lasted a decade, but were waived more times than not.
“I think the first thing [Biden] should do, especially as president of the United States, is say he’s willing to sit down and find a common ground and negotiate together,” McCarthy told reporters Tuesday morning when asked what he would need to see from Biden to consider the meeting a success.
House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) put it more simply: “It would be awesome if the president would admit he is going to negotiate. That would be awesome.”
But GOP members are still fiercely split over major issues like whether to slash the Pentagon’s budget or touch entitlement programs, and broad domestic spending cuts could prove problematic for more moderate, electorally vulnerable members.
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), another conservative who supports limits on domestic spending, said of Biden: “He wants to do a free debt ceiling. And I don’t think that’s what the American people want.”
The first step this time, as House Republicans see it, is for Biden to acknowledge to their leader that the U.S. needs to start chipping away at the nation’s rising borrowing bills. While GOP leaders have agreed to look at capping spending at fiscal 2022 levels in future spending bills, there’s been little open discussion about whether those demands would carry into the debt conversations.
“We can’t even talk about it without the president and Democrats coming to the table,” said House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas).
Democrats, meanwhile, are looking for their own concessions. Biden plans to seek a commitment from McCarthy that the U.S. will never default on its financial obligations, according to a White House memo released earlier Tuesday. Administration officials also said they plan to unveil their proposed budget for the coming fiscal year on March 9, demanding that House GOP leaders reveal their own blueprint detailing their vision for spending cuts.
Some Senate Democrats have said they’re willing to discuss government funding as part of the annual appropriations process, but not while using the nation’s borrowing limit as a bargaining chip.
“There shouldn’t be a negotiation about whether or not we pay our bills,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, a member of the chamber’s Democratic leadership. “If they want to talk about next year’s budget, certainly that’s a legitimate thing. But we don’t negotiate to pay our bills.”
Centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), however, has said it would be a mistake for the White House not to negotiate with Republicans over the debt ceiling. Manchin met with McCarthy last week, after which he said the GOP leader agreed not to cut Medicare and Social Security.
“I think those two can get something done,” Manchin said Monday night of the president and House GOP leader. “I really feel confident about that.”
Unlike some House Republicans, though, Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said he hopes Biden will entertain changes to ensure the long-term solvency of programs like Social Security and Medicare, which “are both headed for bankruptcy.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to cut programs, but it does mean that you’ve got to make reforms … that will translate into making those programs more sustainable for the long term,” Thune said Tuesday. “If you take that off the table in these negotiations, it does obviously limit the amount of the budget that you can address.”
More than a decade ago, then-Vice President Biden and Senate GOP leader McConnell successfully hashed out a spending caps deal to stave off a market-rattling default. But this time, McConnell has said McCarthy should take the lead, arguing that nothing would get through the Democratic-led Senate if it can’t pass the Republican-led House.
McConnell said Tuesday that the 2011 deal was successful when it came to restricting spending in the short-term, but it squeezed defense funding too much.
“We’re all behind Kevin and wishing him well in negotiations,” McConnell said.
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), a senior party appropriator, said Biden will ultimately have to negotiate with the GOP to stave off a debt default that — in Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent words — could result in a “global financial crisis.”
“No one holds all the cards,” Fleischmann said.
Jennifer Scholtes and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“Unfortunately, [McCarthy] let a group of very extreme people, he gave them the tools” to wield power, Schumer said in an interview. “The plan is to get our Republican colleagues in the House to understand they’re flirting with disaster and hurting the American people. And to let the American people understand that as well. And I think we’ll win.”
It’s something of a new, dual-track role for the New Yorker. For the last two years, Schumer and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed bipartisan Senate groups to work and usually avoided a top-down approach that could have disrupted aisle-crossing negotiations. Before that, Schumer spent four years as one of Trump’s chief antagonists, occasionally negotiating with the former president but mostly focusing on stopping him.
Today, Schumer is somewhere in between, haranguing the House GOP while keeping the door open for the bipartisan work his deal-seeking senators crave. And he’s preparing for a long face-off with McCarthy as Washington charts this year’s mid-year debt ceiling deadline like an approaching meteor.
Asked to respond to Schumer, McCarthy criticized the Democrat’s December drive to pass a year-end spending bill shaped in part by two retiring senators.
“When was the last time he did a budget? So, he wants somebody to lift the debt ceiling, but he won’t tell the American people where he’ll spend money?” McCarthy said of Schumer in a brief interview. (During the last Congress, Schumer’s Senate did pass budget bills to set up filibuster-proof party-line legislation on covid relief, taxes, climate and health care.)
At the moment, there’s little cooking in the Senate on the debt ceiling or otherwise, and Schumer is filling the vacuum with a fusillade of attacks on the GOP. Schumer greeted McCarthy’s chaotic speaker election with a snarky congratulations that the Californian’s “dream job could turn into a nightmare for the American people.”
Notably, however, he has since focused mostly on McCarthy’s more conservative members instead of the new speaker personally. He also hasn’t explicitly ruled out negotiations.
And those conservative members are front and center in the new GOP majority after McCarthy’s stumble-filled but ultimately successful bid for the speakership. One concession he made along the way: House Republicans would refuse to support raising the debt ceiling without a “budget agreement or commensurate fiscal reforms,” according to a slide shown during a closed-door conference meeting earlier this month.
Schumer and McCarthy have not yet held a one-on-one meeting. Aides are hopeful there will be one soon, but it is not yet scheduled.
“There’s a fine line between saying, ‘We disagree, and we have our issues,’ as opposed to saying, ‘They’re no good, they’re scum of the earth,’” said Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), who added that he hopes both leaders treat their rhetoric carefully.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is staying away from the fray, saying he’ll leave things to McCarthy and Biden. And Schumer has declined to address the possibility of bringing a so-called clean debt ceiling increase to the floor, a move that could fail and shake financial markets.
Just the same, Democrats don’t want to open the door for a negotiation that unfolds in the unpredictable style that 2011’s debt ceiling talks did. They’re wary of what happened when Biden himself cut a deal with McConnell that resulted in both domestic and military spending cuts.
“There will be opportunities to work together, but not in the context of them threatening the global economy,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said of House Republicans.
Schumer, contra McConnell, is not encouraging Biden to get in a room with McCarthy. Instead, he said that if McCarthy wants to cut spending as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, Democrats need to see their plan to do so first — echoing the combative tone that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has long taken toward McCarthy.
“When you hear from Biden, they agree with us. [Republicans] have to show us their proposal. They have to show us their plan. Plain and simple. Hakeem Jeffries talked about it today. I believe the president will,” Schumer said. “Democrats are united: Show us the plan. That’s the first step.”
Well, Democrats are mostly united, at least. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) called it “unreasonable” to not negotiate and said he’s not going to tell the House what to do.
“Kevin McCarthy and I know each other. We’re trying to build relationships, because we have responsibility,” said Manchin, who met privately with McCarthy last week.
But Manchin has always done his own thing — and at times of crisis, the Senate Democratic caucus is often nearly lockstep behind Schumer.
“It’s pretty predictable. He wants to turn the heat up on Speaker McCarthy. And I would say it’s not particularly productive, but maybe it’s good political theater,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who has sparred with Schumer for two decades. “I was visiting with some of the Texas congressional delegation at lunch [last week]. And they’ve sort of tuned it out.”
Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), chair of the House Budget Committee, said Republicans want to get specific with fiscal changes “like the 2011 spending cap.” Even today, Republicans still praise aspects of the bipartisan 2011 deal, which created a failed deficit-reduction “supercommittee” and then imposed blunt spending cuts that both parties eventually eliminated.
Arrington suggested Republicans would seek a deal with Biden that could include things like a debt commission, a spending freeze or a 10-year spending deal with budget caps. In response to Democrats’ description of the GOP’s position as “extreme,” Arrington responded: “The American people will be the judge of what is extreme.”
But when it comes to the debt ceiling, Schatz said, “there’s not going to be negotiation. They’re gonna have to just realize that this thing is the biggest loser they’ve ever wrapped their arms around.”
That tack may seem to deviate from Schumer’s approach in the last Congress, but as majority leader, the New Yorkers relied on his own unofficial system for legislating. First, he tries to be bipartisan, and if that doesn’t work, he tries to pass things without Republicans.
And if he can’t do either of those, then it’s time to bring the fight to the Senate floor and the cameras.
“I’ve always had a hierarchy,” Schumer said. “We’ll try to work with them when we can, but when they’re as extreme as they are, we have an obligation to stand up.”
Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
