The speaker will have a chance to come face to face with the president
Speaker Kevin McCarthy got what he wanted out of Tuesday’s debt limit talks at the White House: the chance to take on President Biden one-on-one.
The speaker, who believes he has been treated dismissively by the White House and Democrats in Congress, won a deal that his representatives would now negotiate directly with Mr Biden’s top lieutenants. The change minimized the role of the rest of the congressional leadership and gave him and the president more direct control over high-stakes discussions about avoiding a catastrophic bankruptcy.
Now Mr. McCarthy plays at the highest level, as speakers from both parties before him.
“We finally have a formula that has been proven to work in the past,” said Mr. McCarthy after the meeting.
The speaker’s success in securing first place at the negotiating table is, in a sense, a reward for a risky strategy that brought the United States into a potentially catastrophic bankruptcy within weeks. Mr McCarthy has refused to agree to raise the debt limit without conditions, holding a metaphorical gun to the head of the economy until Mr Biden agrees to cuts.
After months of insisting he would never do that, the president seems willing to discuss a possible ransom.
It’s no secret on Capitol Hill that Mr. McCarthy and his fellow Republicans feel the White House and Congressional Democrats have consistently underestimated the speaker after his expectations of a much larger majority fell short and he had to push through 15 ballots. fight to win his job. in January. Republicans believe that Democrats have not given Mr. McCarthy the same status and respect as his predecessors John A. Boehner and Paul D. Ryan, who had stronger policy chops.
At a press conference last week, Mr McCarthy declined to say he was offended or angered by the president’s esteem for him. But he expressed exasperation, noting that Mr Biden had assured him they would meet again after an initial meeting on February 1, but then did not organize another session for months, until the House passed its own legislation that raised the debt limit and at the same time cutting spending and establishing other favored Republican priorities.
“If you think the debt ceiling is as important as I think, why remain silent for 97 days?” asked Mr. McCarthy. “Why would you tell me one thing, that we’re going to meet, and then not?”
Democrats and the White House based their push for an unconditional debt limit increase on the assumption that Mr. McCarthy would not be able to unite his troublesome Republican conference around any plan — not an irrational stance given that dozens of hard-right Republicans had vowed never to vote to raise the debt ceiling. Democrats believed that the failure of House Republicans would then create a scenario where members of both parties would race to raise the debt ceiling without involving budget cuts to avoid catastrophic bankruptcy.
But Mr McCarthy defied odds and squeezed through a partisan proposal that he often notes is the only piece of legislation to date that has raised the debt ceiling.
The change in negotiating parameters now puts McCarthy on a more equal footing with the White House, a position Republicans say befits his stature. In the new arrangement, two senior representatives of the president, White House adviser Steve Ricchetti and budget director Shalanda Young, will try to broker a deal to raise the debt ceiling directly with Representative Garret Graves, Republican of Louisiana and a close McCarthy lieutenant, along with other top aides to the speaker.
It caused a remarkable change in Mr. McCarthy’s attitude to the talks, which had been very pessimistic just hours before.
While he said the two sides remained far apart on the issues, his expectations about the possible outcome had cleared up considerably and his office issued a press release saying that “Negotiations are in progress”.
“After months of delay from President Joe Biden, negotiations are finally underway on a responsible increase in the debt limit,” it reads.
Given the tight deadline, Mr. Biden and key Democrats in Congress have – at least for now – dropped their push for an unconditional increase in the debt limit and instead opened the door to a bipartisan agreement on spending and some policy issues. That is where, according to Mr. McCarthy, the Democrats should have been months ago.
“Unfortunately, the Democrats wasted four months saying it had to be a clean debt limit, saying they wouldn’t negotiate,” he said. “Well you know what? That has all changed now and we are in a place where we should have been back in February.”
As events unfolded on Tuesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican from Kentucky and minority leader who developed previous debt limit resolutions, said the new negotiating dynamic could be crucial to an agreement.
“The president and the speaker are the keys to the deal,” McConnell said.
Having gotten what he wanted in terms of bargaining power, Mr. McCarthy is now under even more pressure to work out a deal with Mr. Biden, even as the White House and Democrats in Congress resist key Republican demands , such as stricter work requirements for food stamps. and other social benefits.
Perhaps even more challenging is keeping House Republicans behind any deal that can eventually be reached. Many of the far-right Conservatives who supported Mr McCarthy’s proposal last month did so to bolster his bargaining position and are unwilling to accept anything less. Still, all parties agreed on Tuesday that the final outcome must be twofold, one that would almost by definition meet with opposition from the furthest reaches of the speaker’s right flank.
Republicans believe Mr. McCarthy will be able to produce the necessary support, noting that he has already won votes on the House debt limit measure, a parental rights bill and an immigration package he expected to lose or give up.
None of these measures stand a chance of surviving in the Democrat-led Senate, but McCarthy’s allies say they show he has a firm grip on his members.
“He’s shown he has a strong hold on this conference,” said Rep. Tom Cole, the Oklahoma Republican who chairs the House Rules Committee. “It’s easy enough for me to say I’ll be comfortable with whatever he comes back with given what he’s done so far.”
Mr. McCarthy predicted he would prevail, even though some doubt his abilities.
“Here’s a Republican conference that none of you thought credible or thought we could get to,” said Mr. McCarthy to reporters at the Capitol as he crossed out his legislative successes. “We’ve found that we can collectively work together and find solutions to the problems Americans expect.”