Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

[David G]

President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached an “agreement in principle” to raise the nation’s legal debt ceiling late Saturday as they raced to strike a deal to limit federal spending and avert a potentially disastrous U.S. default.

https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-news

[MushCreek]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

Political drama.

[David G]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

Political drama.

Yes... and 'performative cruelty' by the GOP madmen. But a decent job by Biden to fend off the worst of it --


Debt Limit Update: Biden Outplays GOP on Final Deal

https://www.messageboxnews.com/p/deb...m_medium=email

[Jim Mahan]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

I was hoping for Biden to have recourse to the fourteenth amendment. Both to avoid giving McCarthy's swarthy band of thugs anything and to leave the R's, including the SCOTUS, with their dicks in their hands. Avoiding the catastrophe is the adult goal, but the Rs who created and pushed the crisis need to be shamed and spanked as much as possible for it, and they need it good and hard all during the next election cycle. How dare those fckers threaten to take my groceries for their miserably stupid unworkable fiscally irresponsible posturing. Reaching a deal with the pirates makes whipping them for it in the public square seem less than they deserve; by rights they oughta be hanged like old-timey pirates or thrown into Guantanamo for being terrorists.

[Canoez]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

McCarthy’s party members are now going to sabotage his agreement, because, like getting the speakership, McCarthy likely doesn’t have the votes.

[LeeG]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

Tell MTG she can’t have her gavel time.

[LeeG]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

btw what’s an “agreement in principle”?

[Rich Jones]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

McCarthy’s party members are now going to sabotage his agreement, because, like getting the speakership, McCarthy likely doesn’t have the votes.

McCarthy will likely have to come crawling to the Dems to get enough votes to pass.
From what I've been reading, Biden had to give up very little.

[elf]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

Biden seems to have outwitted them again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cJMKfB63X8

[David G]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling


After Calling Joe Biden Senile, Republicans Complain He Outsmarted Them


WASHINGTON ― In March, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s colleagues laughed as the California Republican mocked President Joe Biden’s age, saying he would bring Biden “soft food” so they could negotiate over the debt ceiling.

But McCarthy apparently did not bring Biden anything to eat during their talks, and the president chewed up the GOP’s debt limit proposal instead. Republicans aren’t laughing anymore.

“Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) tweeted on Tuesday, making clear she opposed the compromise legislation that came out of Biden and McCarthy’s negotiations.

Biden, 80, is the oldest person to serve as president of the U.S., and his age and alleged senility have been a constant focus of Republicans and right-wing commentators, despite assurances from his doctors that there’s nothing wrong with his mind. Polls have also shown that voters have concerns about Biden’s age.

During the debt limit standoff, McCarthy repeatedly said that by refusing to negotiate with Republicans, Biden was “bumbling” the U.S. toward a potentially catastrophic default. Even some Democrats criticized the president for not publicly engaging as much as McCarthy has in recent weeks. But as of Wednesday, default seemed unlikely, and the outlines of the deal appeared favorable to Democrats.

Asked if Biden had gotten the better of McCarthy, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), replied, “Yeah, I think that’s a fair assumption.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), meanwhile, said he believed McCarthy had simply been “misled.” He didn’t say by whom.

Even McCarthy conceded that he had been impressed with Biden’s negotiating team during the talks, calling them “very professional, very smart” and “very tough at the same time.”

But the speaker has denied that he was outsmarted, touting the bill’s reductions to government spending and stricter “work requirements” for federal food benefits that Democrats opposed. The legislation would reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, in large part due to cuts to non-defense programs, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“How were we outsmarted? The largest cut in the history of Congress. The biggest ability to pull money back,” McCarthy told ABC News on Tuesday. “We’ve got work requirements for welfare where the Democrats said was a red line.”

Still, Biden got plenty of wins in the bill, which cuts federal spending far less than Republicans initially hoped. And in a twist, the CBO said the work requirements won’t reduce spending or enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The program supports 20 million households and already limits benefits for unemployed adults without children or disabilities who are between the ages of 18 and 49, unless they work or perform some other qualifying activity for 20 hours a week. Republicans proposed expanding the work requirement to people in their early 50s, as well as restricting states’ discretion to exempt some recipients. The CBO estimated the Republican proposal would have saved $11 billion and reduced SNAP enrollment by 275,000.

Biden signaled early on that he was open to stricter work requirements for SNAP, just not “anything of any consequence” — a statement that drew mocking laughter from McCarthy and his colleagues as someone, apparently a lawmaker behind the speaker, shouted, “Loser!”

Sure enough, Biden agreed to expand SNAP’s work rules to people as old as 54 — but the White House also won changes that render the net impact of the bill inconsequential, at least from a budget perspective. The CBO said that, thanks to brand-new work requirement exemptions for veterans and homeless people, the bill would actually increase SNAP enrollment by a small amount and boost federal spending by $2 billion.

The analysis was not a surprise to the White House; a senior administration official said Sunday that “we expect that the number of people subject to SNAP work requirements will stay roughly the same under this agreement.”

The deal also preserves key Democratic priorities like student loan debt relief, climate change funding, and the bulk of investments aimed at making sure the wealthy pay their taxes.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-b...5ce2485f035?w4

[CWSmith]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

Now if voters were paying attention, they would vote out of office people who were outsmarted by someone so obviously senile. Sadly, their memory is even shorter than the people they elect to represent them.

[sandtown]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

Sorry, but y'all are wrong here. The Dems could have easily avoided the whole circus, but chose not to . . .

. . . the ugly truth . .

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/no-bargain-big-money-and-the-debt-ceiling-deal?link_id=2&can_id=a50b874c9ef4458f2114332a9a81b251&source=email-debt-ceiling-why-the-democrats-keep-doing-groundhog-day-interviews-available-2&email_referrer=email_1937457&email_subject=debt-ceiling-why-the-democrats-keep-doing-groundhog-day

[JimD]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

Now if voters were paying attention, ...

Unfortunately, they aren't.

[Keith Wilson]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

Sorry, but y'all are wrong here. The Dems could have easily avoided the whole circus, but chose not to . . . the ugly truth . . Link

Lots of good data, but not at all supporting your conclusion that 'the Dems could have easily avoided the whole circus, but chose not to.' 'Chose not to' is just silly- except perhaps by not deciding to invoke the 14th amendment and telling the Republicans to go f*ck themselves, a chancy move at best given the current Supreme Court.

This was particularly impressive:

[sandtown]

Re: Biden, GOP reach tentative deal to raise debt ceiling

Lots of good data, but not at all supporting your conclusion that 'the Dems could have easily avoided the whole circus, but chose not to.' 'Chose not to' is just silly- except perhaps by not deciding to invoke the 14th amendment and telling the Republicans to go f*ck themselves, a chancy move at best given the current Supreme Court.

You obviously did not pay any attention to the linked source . . .

All the Dems had to do was raise the debt ceiling during the lame duck session.

The fact is the Dems went along with harassing the poor and slashing social spending because they wanted to.

Just like back in 2011 during debt negotiations back then, the Dems made the Bush tax cuts permanent. They did not have to do that. They wanted to.

I repeat, the whole sordid affair is naught but an ugly charade. (from the link)

The way the President chose to negotiate this time did nothing to ease such fears. A New York Times editorial observed that “Democrats could have voted to eliminate the debt ceiling between the fall elections and January, when Republicans took control of the House, or they could have voted to provide the government with sufficient borrowing capacity until the next congressional elections in 2024. Instead, they chose this confrontation. Mr. Biden last fall labeled proposals to eliminate the debt ceiling ‘irresponsible.’ Other Democrats appeared to relish the politics of a fight. Now they are facing the consequences, which will most likely include the partial reversal of legislative victories won during Mr. Biden’s first two years.”