A day after striking a deal in principle with President Biden to raise the debt limit, Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his leadership team launched a sweeping sales pitch on Sunday to rally Republicans behind a compromise that drew fierce resistance from the far right.
To push the legislation through a difficult and deeply divided Congress, Mr. McCarthy and top Democratic leaders forge a coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate willing to support it. Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus have already declared war on the plan, which they say does not impose meaningful cuts, and warned they would try to block it.
So after spending the last few days late night and early morning in feverish negotiations to close the deal, proponents have put their energies into making sure it can pass in time to avoid bankruptcy. now projected on June 5.
“This is the most conservative spending package in my service in Congress, and this is my 10th term,” Representative Patrick T. McHenry, a North Carolina Republican and a leading member of Mr. McCarthy’s negotiating team, said at a press conference at Capitol Hill on Sunday morning.
House Republicans circulated a one-page memo with 10 talking points about the conservative benefits of the deal, which was finalized Sunday and written into legislative text hours before it was expected to be released. The GOP memo claimed the plan would limit government spending to 1 percent per year for six years — though the measure is only binding for two years — noting that it would impose stricter job requirements on Americans receiving government benefits, and $400 million would cut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for global health funding and cut funding for hiring new IRS agents in 2023.
“It’s not getting everything everyone wanted,” said Mr. McCarthy to reporters on Capitol Hill. “But in a divided government, we end up there. I think it is a very positive bill.”
And Mr. Biden, speaking to reporters, said “yes” when asked if he was confident a deal would reach his desk.
Still, the deal, which would raise the debt ceiling for two years while lowering and capping a number of federal programs over the same period, drew harsh criticism from the wings of both political parties.
“Terrible policy, absolutely terrible policy,” Washington Democrat Representative Pramila Jayapal said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” referring to the job requirements for food stamps and other public assistance programs. “When he called me last Wednesday, I told the president directly that he tells poor people and people in need that we don’t trust them.”
Ms. Jayapal, the president of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she wanted to read the bill before deciding whether to support it.
Some on the right had already ruled this out before seeing the details.
“No one claiming to be a conservative can warrant a YES vote,” Virginia Republican Representative Bob Good and member of the House Freedom Caucus wrote on Twitter. North Carolina Republican Rep. Dan Bishop posted his reaction to news of the deal: a puke emoji.
Russell T. Vought, President Trump’s influential former budget director who now runs the Center for Renewing America, encouraged right-wing Republicans to use their seats on the House Rules Committee — which Mr. McCarthy entrusted to them as he toiled to win their votes . speaker – to block the deal. “Conservatives must fight it with all their might,” he said.
Some Senate Republicans, who under that chamber’s rules have more tools to delay the consideration of legislation, also rioted.
“There are no real cuts to be seen here,” Sen. Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said on Twitter. “Conservatives are sold out again!”
“Who needs Democrats with Republicans like that?” asked Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, who has vowed to delay the debt limit deal.
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was also critical, albeit for a very different reason. He called the deal too stingy and demanded more robust military funding, particularly for the Navy.
“I’m not going to make a deal that marginally reduces the number of IRS agents in the future at the expense of sinking the Navy,” said Mr. Graham on “Fox News Sunday.”
But Mr. McCarthy argued that Republican critics were a small faction.
“More than 95 percent of all conference attendees were very excited,” McCarthy, who briefed Republicans on the deal Saturday night, said on Fox. “Think about this: we’ve finally been able to cut costs. We are the first Congress to vote to cut spending year after year.”
The deal would essentially freeze federal spending that was on track to grow, excluding military and veterans programs.
Rep. Dusty Johnson, a South Dakota Republican and an ally of Mr. McCarthy, said House Republicans would overwhelmingly support the debt deal. He downplayed the right-wing uprising, claiming that leaders never expected certain members of the House Freedom Caucus to vote for it.
“If you say conservatives are concerned, they’re really the most colorful conservatives,” Johnson said on “State of the Union,” noting that some Republicans even voted against a more conservative proposal to raise the debt ceiling. “Some of those guys you mentioned didn’t vote for the thing when it was sort of a Republican wish list.”
Still, it was clear that Mr. McCarthy would need Democrat votes to pass the measure — and it may not prove easy, especially from the left-wing in the House.
Representative Jim Himes, a Democrat from Connecticut, said he didn’t know how to vote, but expressed anger at the negotiations, which he compared to being held hostage by Republicans.
“None of the things in the bill are Democratic priorities,” Mr Himes said on Fox. Mr Himes said the legislation “would not make any Democrats happy”.
“But it’s a bill small enough to get Democratic votes not to destroy the economy this week,” he said.
New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, said Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Biden would speak again on Sunday afternoon before the Biden administration briefed the House Democratic Caucus.
“I expect there will be Democratic support once we have the opportunity to actually be fully briefed by the White House,” Jeffries said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
But he was clear that he didn’t like the position the Democrats were in.
“We must of course prevent a market crash. We must prevent the economy from coming under pressure. We must avoid a default,” said Mr. Jeffries. “The reason we’ve been in this situation from the very beginning is that extreme MAGA Republicans were determined to use the possibility of default to hold the economy and ordinary Americans hostage.”