Global Courant 2023-05-29 03:54:44
With days to spare for a possible first-ever administration bankruptcy, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached a final agreement on Sunday on a deal to raise the country’s debt ceiling and worked to secure enough Republican and Democratic votes to pass the measure. to be approved in the near future. week.
The Democratic president and Republican speaker met on Sunday night as negotiators scrambled to draft the bill’s text so lawmakers can review compromises that neither the far-right nor the left are likely to support. Instead, leaders work to rally support from the political center as Congress races to vote before a June 5 deadline to avoid a damaging federal default.
“Good news,” Biden declared at the White House on Sunday evening.
“The agreement prevents the worst possible crisis, bankruptcy, for the first time in our country’s history,” he said. “Takes the threat of catastrophic bankruptcy off the table.”
The president urged both parties in Congress to come together for a swift passage. “The speaker and I made it clear from the start that the only way forward was an agreement between two parties,” he said.
The compromise announced late Saturday includes cuts, but risks angering some lawmakers as they take a closer look at the concessions. Biden told reporters at the White House upon his return from Delaware that he was confident the plan would make it to his desk.
McCarthy, too, was confident in comments on the Capitol: “Ultimately, people can look together to get past this.”
The next few days will show whether Washington can once again narrowly avoid defaulting on the US debt, as it has done many times before, or whether the global economy will slip into potential crisis.
In the United States, bankruptcy can cause financial markets to freeze and trigger an international financial crisis. Analysts say millions of jobs would disappear, credit and unemployment rates would rise, and a stock market fall could wipe out trillions of dollars in household wealth. It would nearly destroy the $24 trillion government bond market.
Concerned retirees and others were already making contingency plans for missed checks, with Social Security payments next once the world sees US leadership at stake.
McCarthy and his negotiators portrayed the deal as a result for Republicans, though it fell far short of the sweeping cuts they sought. Top White House officials briefed Democratic lawmakers and called some directly to try and garner support.
As Sunday dragged on, negotiators worked to write the bill and lawmakers asked questions.
McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol on Sunday that the deal “isn’t going to get everything everyone wanted,” but that was to be expected in a divided administration. Privately, he told lawmakers on a conference call that the Democrats “didn’t get anything” they wanted.
A statement from the president’s White House, released after Biden and McCarthy spoke by phone Saturday night and an agreement in principle followed, said the deal “avoids what could have been a catastrophic default.”
The support of both parties will be needed to gain congressional approval before the administration is expected to default on US debt on June 5. Lawmakers are not expected to return to work from Memorial Day weekend until Tuesday at the earliest, and McCarthy has promised lawmakers he will abide by the rule of posting bills 72 hours before voting.
Negotiators agreed to some Republican demands for more job requirements for food stamp recipients that House Democrats had called a nonstarter.
If the outlines of an agreement are in place, the legislative package could be drafted and shared with lawmakers in time for House votes as early as Wednesday and in the Senate later in the week.
At the center of the compromise is a two-year budget deal that would essentially keep spending the same for 2024, while boosting it for defense and veterans, and limiting increases to 1% for 2025. That’s in addition to raising the debt limit for two year, causing the volatile political issue after the next presidential election.
By driving hard to impose tougher job demands on recipients of state aid, Republicans achieved some of what they wanted. It requires people aged 49 to 54 with food stamp assistance to meet work requirements if they are able-bodied and have no dependents. Biden was able to obtain waivers for veterans and the homeless.
The deal makes changes to the landmark National Environmental Policy Act that designates “one lead agency” to develop environmental assessments, in hopes of streamlining the process.
It puts some funds into hiring new Internal Revenue Service agents, as the Republicans demanded, and withdraws about $30 billion for coronavirus relief, leaving $5 billion for developing next-generation COVID-19 solutions. 19 vaccines.
The deal came about after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress that the United States could default on June 5 — four days later than previously estimated — if lawmakers don’t act in time. Lifting the country’s debt limit, now at $31 trillion, will allow more to be borrowed to pay already-insured bills.
McCarthy has only a slim Republican majority in the House, where hard-right conservatives can oppose any deal so inadequate as they try to cut spending. By compromising with the Democrats, he risks losing the support of his own members, leaving the new speaker with a challenging career.
“I think you’ll get a majority of Republicans to vote for this bill,” McCarthy said on Fox News Sunday, adding that because Biden supported it, “I think there’s going to be a lot of Democrats who will vote for that as well .”
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he expected there would be Democratic support, but declined to give any. When asked if he could guarantee that there would be no default, he replied: “Yes.”
A 100-member group of moderates in the New Democratic Coalition gave a crucial nod of support on Sunday, saying in a statement they are confident Biden and his team have delivered “a viable, bipartisan solution to end this crisis” and to it worked to ensure the agreement would receive support from both sides.
The coalition could provide enough support for McCarthy to make amends for those members on his party’s right who voiced their opposition before the bill’s wording was even released.
It also takes the pressure off Biden, who has been criticized by progressives for giving in to what they call Republican hostage-taking.
Washington State Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal, who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told CBS that the White House and Jeffries should be concerned about whether members of the caucus will support the agreement.
