Will it pass? Questions now turn to selling the debt ceiling deal.
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Striking a bipartisan compromise in politically fractured Washington is hard. Selling it can be even harder. After months of sparring, President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) now have the difficult task of selling their “agreement in principle” to suspend the debt ceiling in exchange for caps on federal spending to the skeptical flanks of their base. Lawmakers have just a few short days to get it through both chambers of a factionalized and deeply divided Congress.
Those in the far-left and far-right corners of the House have already begun criticizing the compromise announced Saturday evening. Liberals remained unconvinced of supporting a bill that includes few of their priorities and tightens federal aid for the poor, while staunch conservatives have already concluded it does little to blunt government spending and curb the nation’s debt, which now stands over $31 trillion.
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These critics pose significant hurdles that House GOP and Democratic leaders must overcome as they assess whether they have enough votes to pass a bipartisan bill to avert a historic default by June 5.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has been privately reassuring his conference while publicly reinforcing how the emerging deal is a compromise that all factions of the ideological political spectrum should support.
“We’re finalizing an agreement with the president that I believe is worthy of the American people,” he told reporters Sunday morning. “It doesn’t get everything everybody wanted. But that’s, in divided government, that’s where we end up. I think it’s a very positive bill.”
McCarthy confidently projected Sunday that he would get the “majority of the majority” of House Republicans to vote for the deal, a standard to bring any legislation to the floor that staunch conservatives pushed McCarthy to accept in exchange for their votes so he could become speaker. That suggests GOP leaders would need at least 111 Republicans to support it, plus up to 107 Democrats to clinch the 218-vote threshold needed to pass the House.
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Biden also recognized the deal did not amount to a complete victory for Democrats. “The agreement represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want,” the president said in a statement. “That’s the responsibility of governing.”
The bill’s text is expected to be released sometime Sunday, after which McCarthy and Biden are to speak by phone.
The agreement struck by Biden and McCarthy would lift the debt limit for two years — or until after the presidential election — in exchange for two years of spending limits, tighter work requirements on federal aid programs and the clawback of some recently approved funding for the IRS.
Liberal lawmakers have expressed concerns over the deal’s new work requirements for food stamps and family welfare benefits — which they say could deprive thousands of Americans of critical benefits — as well as its freeze on funding for domestic programs, which would translate into a cut when accounting for inflation. Liberal angst about the domestic spending freeze was exacerbated by the bill’s increase to the military budget, which many Democrats oppose.
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Conservative frustration has centered on the bill’s relative lack of spending cuts. GOP leaders have emphasized that spending on domestic programs will drop, but White House officials say the deal makes those initiatives whole by redirecting money from the IRS and from unused covid aid.
Budget experts say the deal may lead to deficits that are a few hundred billion dollars lower than prior projections, but it will not meaningfully change the trajectory of the federal debt, which is set to balloon to $52 trillion at the end of the decade.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Sunday morning that he was reserving judgment on the deal, noting that his caucus had yet to review the legislative text when pressed on whether he could deliver the Democratic votes necessary. White House officials are set to brief all House Democrats early Sunday evening but have touched base with individual lawmakers and circulated a three-page “topline points” document to all offices. They will brief Senate Democrats following their call with their House members.
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Jeffries said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he trusts Biden to deliver “a result that avoids a catastrophic default, that prevents us from our economy crashing and stops the extreme MAGA Republicans from triggering a job-killing recession.”
Republicans have long acknowledged throughout the weeks of negotiations that they will need Democratic votes to pass a bipartisan bill off to the Senate, given that their partisan proposal barely had enough support to pass through their narrow four-vote majority last month.
Members of the staunchly conservative House Freedom Caucus have already balked at the bill, tweeting their objections after House Republicans held an all-member briefing Saturday evening. Many have echoed their informal adviser Russ Vought, former president Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, who argues the deal will add $4 trillion in additional debt and directed conservatives to “fight” against the bill “with all their might.”
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“No one claiming to be a conservative could justify a YES vote,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), who never voted in support of McCarthy for speaker, though has complimented him throughout his tenure thus far.
Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) summarized the McCarthy call on Saturday night as “RINOs [Republicans in Name Only] congratulating McCarthy for getting almost zippo in exchange for $4T debt ceiling hike,” and said the framework was enough to make one puke.
McCarthy responded to Bishop on “Fox News Sunday,” claiming his objection is “okay because more than 95 percent of all those in the conference were very excited” about the bill.
Republican leaders and key allies to McCarthy will need to gauge where lawmakers across the five ideological factions stand, to ensure that support does not drop too far off as Freedom Caucus colleagues or outside influencers try to whip support against the GOP leadership.
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Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), who chairs one of those factions — the Main Street Governance Group — praised the deal struck by McCarthy and Biden in part because it contains plenty of Republican priorities.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Johnson characterized the overall GOP resistance as minimal since it’s only been expressed by “the most colorful conservatives” in the conference. Johnson boldly predicted that even some of the roughly three dozen Freedom Caucus members could end up voting for the bill. He did acknowledge Good as one holdout who wouldn’t be swayed, even with divine intervention.
“Doesn’t matter if Mother Teresa came back from the dead and called him. He’s not voting for it. He was never going to.” Johnson then added, “This is going to pass.”
The first real test will come early this week when the House Rules Committee convenes to debate and vote on whether to pass the deal for full consideration on the House floor. Leaders hope the full vote could happen as soon as Wednesday.
The rules committee is made up nine Republicans and four Democrats. It’s unclear whether any of the Democrats would support the bill, but as a matter of course, committee members from the minority party typically vote no. So the outcome could come down to a single Republican who is so far undecided about the bill.
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More broadly, Democrats have been worried for weeks that the White House has not defended the party’s priorities and even Sunday were struggling to understand whether there will be enough support to pass it through their ranks.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the White House should worry about whether it can get all roughly 100 members in the caucus on board. She did not know if she would support the deal since she has not seen it in writing but is “not happy with some of the things I’m hearing about.” Specifically, Jayapal criticized new work requirements for some people who receive federal food assistance, calling it “bad policy.”
The New Democrat Coalition, a group of roughly 100 pragmatic and moderate House Democrats, said in a statement Sunday that its members will work with the White House and Democratic leaders to ensure there is enough support from colleagues to pass the bill over to the Senate.
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“We want to be clear — our Members are committed to upholding the full faith and credit of the United States,” said Rep. Ann Kuster (D-N.H.), who chairs the group.
Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), who serves as House Democrats’ assistant leader, said on MSNBC that the work requirements changes are “a pretty good compromise,” a strikingly different tone than the one used a majority of Democrats who are uniformly against any new proposals. Clyburn said he spoke two days ago with Biden, who told him he would compromise on able-bodied workers “but not on compassion,” referring to the expanded eligibility for food stamps for the homeless and veterans.
“That’s the kind of person Joe Biden is,” Clyburn said. “A little bit of process, but more compassion.”
Jayapal criticized Republicans for the lengthy and acrimonious process that led to the deal. “You’ve got to ask yourself, ‘What was all the drama for?’ Because they didn’t get what they said they wanted,” Jayapal said.
When asked what Republicans had to give up to get this deal, however, Johnson was insistent: nothing.
“That is the amazing part to me,” Johnson said. “There were no wins for Democrats” and “There is nothing out of the passage of this bill that will be more liberal or more progressive than it is today. It’s a remarkable conservative accomplishment.”
Meanwhile, in the Senate, where at least nine Republican senators will need to join all 51 members of the Democratic caucus to send the bill to Biden’s desk, support also seems uncertain.
“I will not adopt the Biden defense budget and call it a success,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) fumed on “Fox News Sunday.”
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) retweeted Roy’s tweet criticizing the deal, and added that the more he learns about it, “the more I think it’s bad news.”
The White House will also have to persuade Democrats in the upper chamber. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on MSNBC, “We are still learning details of this deal” and “I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve read it.”
The lack of legislative text has left much up to interpretation for both parties, presenting the imminent challenge that leaders and key allies will need to work to overcome.
On “Fox News Sunday,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) expressed little confidence that a deal could garner enough votes after pointing to the Freedom Caucus’s publicly “obliterating the deal” and predicting his liberal colleagues will be loudly denouncing the bill on the call with White House officials Sunday.
“I hope that I’m wrong in my pessimistic prognostication that this could be a disaster,” he said.
Tony Romm, Paul Kane, Meryl Kornfield and Toluse Olorunnipa contributed reporting.
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Source: The Washington Post
