The New York Times reports:
“A day after striking a deal in principle with President Biden to raise the debt limit, Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his leadership team began an all-out sales pitch on Sunday to rally Republicans behind a compromise that was drawing intense resistance from the hard right.”
Quick Take. What happens next?
Speaker McCarthy was on Fox News Sunday this morning taking a well-earned victory lap. Having said that, he needs to stay humble. He pulled off a nice coup, and he defied expectations, but he should take care not to get too self-congratulatory.
Good news for McCarthy. Rank and file Democrats are mildly disheartened. Democrats in the Progressive Caucus are irate. And Republicans on the far edge of conservatism are already bailing on the plan.
Does McCarthy Need to Pass this Bill with ONLY GOP Votes?
No. Once again the NYT misstates the political reality.
McCarthy claims he has 95 percent of his caucus on board. If he keeps that number (even if he keeps 80 percent), he should be golden. Remember, as we discussed a month ago in “McCarthy Takes the High Ground,” it is not unreasonable to expect Democratic Leadership to provide the remainder of votes needed for a default-avoiding bill. We expect defectors from both sides (many more from the Democratic side of the aisle), but the President and Democratic leadership in both houses cannot allow the ruling party to reject a compromise and plunge the nation into an economic cataclysm—especially since they spent the last five months seeding stories establishing the existential peril of default, discussing scary “x dates,” and fostering the notion that negotiation and accommodation represent the patriotic duty of a statesman.
And, remember, even though it is a fact rarely stated in the pages of the New York Times, the “in case of emergency break glass” option is the House bill passed on April 27. I disagree with pundits who say the Speaker erred in scheduling a House vote on the compromise before the Senate acted first in good faith. If all goes according to schedule, the House will vote again this week and the Senate will take up the bill next Monday. “June 5th” is a week from tomorrow. The timing and order make perfect sense. McCarthy would not want to cede the initiative at this point to an unreliable Senate, as they might well produce a muddled bill subject to a messy reconciliation fight.
No. The most strategic and efficient path for McCarthy was exactly what he seems to be doing: make a deal, write up the bill, leave it up for inspection for 72 hours (a notable win for the legislative process and regular order in itself), pass it on the House floor with a bipartisan majority, adjourn and leave town, and then place the entire responsibility for accord or default solely in the hands of the United States Senate and the subsequent signature of the President.
Sure. Things could still go wrong. As of this writing, we have not actually seen a new bill. The Progressive Caucus, which includes the mainstream media, could raise holy hell. Donald Trump could come out hard against the compromise and chip off a few more Republicans. The President and the Senate Majority Leader could cave in the face of an unanticipated national uproar and partisan revolt. But, even if any or all of that happened, there is still no Plan B. We would face an impending default or an unprecedented executive fix that would provoke a constitutional crisis. And, again, in the midst of all that turmoil, the only sure alternative would be the first House bill that the Democrats despise even more than the odious compromise.
Most likely this sticks. In terms of pure political gamesmanship, kudos to McCarthy for pulling off the inside straight.
The Bad News. Everything we said about the national debt and our unsustainable economic trajectory remains true—and this entertaining drama that happily avoids immediate embarrassment and intense pain in the short run does nothing to defuse our ticking fiscal timebomb.
Like Scarlett O’Hara, perhaps we will “think about that tomorrow.”
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