I was listening for the tone, as much as the substance, when White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt came on Morning Edition today. President Biden is meeting with Congressional leaders in an effort to avoid default on U.S. government debts.
Congress has set spending levels, but House Republicans have yet to authorize the borrowing that these commitments require. They’re demanding future spending cuts in return for their assent.
While Biden declined to negotiate, he is meeting today with the Congressional leaders of both parties, including Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Talking with A Martinez, LaBolt observed that Republicans raised the debt limit three times when Donald Trump was president. He said budget negotiations “shouldn’t happen with default hanging over the American people.”
Yet LaBolt said the White House is willing to discuss the budget. “The president today will urge action,” LaBolt said. “He’ll also emphasize areas that they can work together.” The Republican plan is “a non-starter,” but “they’re both committed to deficit reduction.”
Both sides do now have budget plans—Biden’s released March 9; House Republicans’ approved in late April—and while their numbers are radically different, there is an ordinary budget and appropriations process, through which House and Senate committees could establish long-term plans as well as annual spending.
Up to now, Speaker McCarthy has had little freedom to rely on the regular order, as it’s called. Key members of his Republican majority have demanded more dramatic action—and with the Republican majority so narrow, nearly all his members are key to McCarthy. “The caucus controls him, rather than him leading the caucus,” Princeton analyst Julian Zelizer told me recently. “And they have made it crystal clear that this debt ceiling fight is serious and that they're willing to go through with the ultimate threat.”
Zelizer added that Republicans really do have leverage to force Biden to talk.
Politicians have used the debt ceiling to make political points for decades; Senator Barack Obama once voted against raising it. But Republicans have dramatically raised the stakes in recent years, when a Democrat is president.
On NPR yesterday, GOP Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota addressed the danger that the debt ceiling fight could damage the global financial system:
INSKEEP: Is it necessary to put your constituents' retirement plans at risk in order to achieve your policy goal?
JOHNSON: We put their retirement plans at risk, Steve, if we do not act.
“Had we just done our work three months ago,” Johnson said, “we wouldn't be talking about putting the stock market at risk.”
Instead the two sides are talking now, and the stakes are high, though the tone, for the moment, seems calm.
Thanks for reading Differ We Must, my exploration of our political divides (and the title of this book about our past divides). Now I must be off - it seems that Imran Khan was arrested in Pakistan.