The debt limit deal…
…has yet to be approved by Congress. And people are all over the map about whether the deal itself is a good thing or a bad one. To me, it’s at least semi-good in the sense that it’s not an obvious fiasco on the scale of past negotiations by the GOP. And it was done with a Congress where the GOP has only a thin margin in the House and none at all in the Senate, not to mention a Democrat president.
This piece says Joe lost.
This one says the deal is so-so.
And this one says McCarthy lost.
Take your pick.
This from Stephen Moore who is about as good on this issue as there is out there is just about right in my opinion.
https://nypost.com/2023/05/29/kevin-mccarthys-debt-ceiling-deal-is-a-step-in-the-right-direction/
Whether Biden or McCarthy will win is TBD, we already know the tax paying citizens will lose.
The biggest win for McCarthy is that it is even a debate as to whether he won or not (in that sense, he is almost certainly the winner). Traditionally, the (R) get nothing AND the blame for everything wrong in the universe.
Yesterday I thought that any GOP votes against the “deal” would be shooting themselves in the foot and putting them in bad standing with the public. Sort of “compromise is a bitch” where no one gets what they want.
Now, however, I read (who knows if true) that the “deal” keeps all the Covid spending in place, which to me is ridiculous. I would think we should be back to 2019 levels plus inflation correction. Also read that this Covid spending was a 40%(!) increase. No wonder we have inflation.
I’m with the “step in the right direction” crowd. Not “good” in any real sense, but less bad than simply rolling over and increasing the debt ceiling with no changes at all.
We have no hope of a “good” deal unless we get the Senate and the presidency.
I have read that Thomas Massie who wrote the GOP House bill, says that if a formal budget is not passed, any Continuing Resolution must include a 1% spending cut from last year. I believe this will only apply if the GOP bill is passed by the Senate and signed by Brandon. It’s a good idea but so are a lot of things that won’t happen.
This deal is a disaster. I’d been pleasantly surprised by McCarthy’s performance as Speaker so far and his rhetoric in the lead up to this deal was effective but this deal does next to nothing to reduce spending in any meaningful way. I wasn’t expecting too much in these negotiations given the very thin majority Republicans have in the house but there were issues that had wide public support, including meaningful reductions in the 80 billion to the IRS (not the 1.4 billion drop in the bucket that they agreed to.)
Politically the deal is even worse because it gives Biden cover for his excessive spending and further divides the Republican legislators from their base. Biden can barely contain his glee.
Gregory Harper:
What alternative deal do you think had a chance of actually succeeding?
Interest on the national debt is at 600+ billion this year and growing exponentially. At some point in the not too distant future, without drastic cuts in spending there won’t even be enough in tax receipts to service the debt, let alone pay for anything else. That’s when everything comes crashing down.
I don’t know if McCarthy could have gotten a better deal, but if the Republicans don’t take charge of everything in 2024 and control spending, we’re done as a nation.
Folks back home used to say if can’t pay cash for it sure as hell can’t pay for it plus interest.
DC already has a sketchy credit history:
https://www.axios.com/2023/05/16/us-history-debt-default
it seems every evil thing passes, every good thing is strangled,
Neo:
I realize that Republicans were not going to get everything they wanted but as I wrote there is very broad support for meaningful reduction in the 80 billion in IRS spending. The issue could be framed quite simply “do you want to risk default so that another 87,000 IRS agents can harass you?”
In the big picture that’s not much money but it would have been a symbolic victory. The structure of this bill also takes the debt ceiling debate off the table until after the election. If McCarthy knew this was the best he could do, he would have been better off not having these negotiations at all. The Republican base is very angry right now. We’ll see how the vote pans out but it’s conceivable this could be as popular with Democrats as Republicans which would kneecap McCarthy as Speaker.
It never ceases to amaze me when people seem to think that in a negotiation their side should always get every thing they want.
Could the deal have been better? Yes, but most things can be better.
why was tormenting the citizenry with 82,000 agents a good thing, how is piling up even more stratospheric debt, which turns our money to scrap, that really puts entitlements in danger, as everything is subsumed to finance the debt,
The House has an absolute veto on spending and did not have to make any kind of deal to keep the debt limit in place and cut spending. If a majority in the House had wanted it would have happened, there is no need for a “deal”. There would have been no “default”. The debt would continue to be serviced while other spending got cut. But cutting spending has never been a Republican priority in this century, and there is not a House majority in favor of cutting spending because too many Republicans are unreliable.
The deal we are seeing is a baby step, and should not be regarded as more than that. Too many Republicans think it is more important that the cronies get paid. If we continue to demand accountability from them this may change. If we don’t, if we praise them for doing so little, then the theater and the spending will continue.
Incidentally, if you believe, as many Republican politicians claim to, that spending needs to be cut and debt needs to be reined in, there is no more effective way to make that happen than to let the debt ceiling stay where it is. The interest payments must be made, and spending that isn’t absolutely essential cannot happen. All the discussions about what spending is “really needed” that waste everyone’s time and perpetrate the current system cannot happen when the Debt ceiling is hit, just like a household HAS to curb its spending when it can’t get more credit or income.
Instead, our party brought us the promise of a reduction in the growth of spending later, in exchange for an increase in the debt ceiling now and spending continuing as it has been for an undetermined time to come, and some of us try to spin it as a victory–when to achieve the real victory all they had to do was literally nothing. Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today, as the White Queen said.
So, if you have a group of people who say they want to accomplish something, and to accomplish that thing requires them to do literally nothing, but instead they come to a very complicated arrangement and do a lot of work to avoid the accomplishment coming to pass: what should that tell you about their actual desires?
It is vain to say House Republicans didn’t have the power. They do, the Constitution gives that power to the House and the Republicans have an absolute majority there.
But there are not enough Republicans who actually want to control spending, and that is why the House worked out a deal, and that is why some conservatives talk about a Uniparty: there is a substantial fraction of Republican politicians who prefer to work with the Democrats on these things. And there it is.
In the end it’s all about how to spend the taxpayers’ money to extend one’s own influence and wealth, and you don’t need to be in the majority party to do this, or have a majority in both Houses, or have the President in your party. You just need to have the right kind of flexibility, and say the right things when you’re up for re-election, and have votes arranged for you so you can tell your constituents you voted for it before you voted against it, or you voted against it but you voted for cloture, or blah blah blah.
No one lost. This “deal” is exactly as expected from the Ruling Elite. Anyone who thinks Kevi “fought” for the American citizens is beyond gullible. Agreeing to pay for the debt was baked in the cake. He’s already pivoted to pumping up his coming actions on the budget which will turn out to be smoke and mirrors. I hope he gets tossed as Speaker.
Brakes! Do I hear ‘brakes’??
North Carolina Congressman Becomes First Republican to Signal Support for Ousting Kevin McCarthy Over Debt Ceiling Surrender to Joe Biden
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/05/it-is-inescapable-me-it-has-be-done/
All the talk about a thin GOP majority is intended to gloss over a key fact. If GOP House members stick together and do their jobs, they absolutely will have enough votes to stop this massive, runaway debt train. Time to man up.
Remember, folks: the enemy of the perfectly bad is the bad.
Cb
McCarthy is going nowhere.
Wants are infinite. Resources are finite. There’s your fate.
Whatever this deal is I do not expect the electorate has the stomach, or, get weaned off of it’s addiction to federal spending to enact cuts that overtake the rate of increase of bothe the debt and the deficit.
Dems in the House are voting for the deal. The Republican party is an echo, not a choice.
A reminder that doing nothing, and leaving the debt ceiling as is, is total conservative victory* and does not even require a vote. Yet McCarthy is putting all this work into something that Democrats in the House want to vote for so he can remove the possibility of a conservative victory.
*If you think cutting spending and not increasing debt further are important conservative principles, that is. Nothing else but leaving the debt ceiling as is has any prospect of working.
Sometimes there’s room for differing interpretations but in this case the logic is airtight:
1: When the debt ceiling is reached, the government is forced to reduce spending and stop borrowing, but continues to service debt and so the government does not default. The government still has revenue and cannot spend more than its revenue, it simply has to prioritize what needs to be paid. We all know the government has doubled its outlays since 2011 which was not known to be a period of lean government: this doubled spending cannot all be essential.
2: Raising the debt ceiling requires the agreement of both Houses and the President, but leaving the debt ceiling alone requires no one to do anything since it is the status quo.
3: If a majority of the House does not vote to raise the debt ceiling it cannot happen.
4: The Republican Party has a majority in the House.
5: The Republican Party need do nothing to force the government to stop spending more than its revenue, in other words does not need to make any kind of “deal” for this to happen.
6: The Republican Party IS making a deal, one that Democrats are signing on to and one that conservative Republicans are refusing to support.
The logic is clear: the Republican Party collectively does not want the government to stop spending more than its revenue; this is proved because they are going to great lengths to avoid letting it happen automatically.
A lot of ink has been spilled this year to obfuscate the logic. The Republicans never had to make any kind of deal in order to win everything they claim to be fighting for, fiscally at any rate.
Frederick:
You’re leaving out the elephant in the room – which is the spectre of default, recession, etc., which the Democrats and the MSM would milk for all its worth.
Neo,
True. What has the GOP done to enable it to get its message out so that the MSM monopoly is neutralized?
This is the issue. The GOP and conservatives have whined about the unfairness of the news media since Friendly and CBS knifed Goldwater in a particularly despicable way. That’s nearly 60 years.
Perhaps the strongest argument for Trump is that he is capable of getting out his message to his supporters better than anyone else. And he has the courage and the stomach to call out the dishonesty of the MSM and take on all the arrows with a smile.
DeSantis would be well-advised to demonstrate that he can get his message to GOP voters without it being misdirected and slandered by the MSM.
@neo:You’re leaving out the elephant in the room – which is the spectre of default, recession, etc., which the Democrats and the MSM would milk for all its worth.
“Default” and “recession” of course being media lies.
So is the media is going to continue to lie about Republicans if the Republicans don’t compromise? Can’t have that…
And if the Republicans give the Dems what they want the media is not going to continue to lie about these issues?
And when we hit the next debt ceiling what’s going to change if the Republicans do this deal, any more than it changed the last dozen times?
I don’t see how anything changes by Republicans compromising here. It’s just another sellout and more excuses for it.
And when we’ve kicked the can down the road so far that raising the debt ceiling doesn’t help because there’s no more takers for the debt, or if we default because tax revenue no longer covers interest, what are the excuses going to be then?
Frederick can’t admit an elephant is in the room. If an elephant is seen the “Uniparty” would be as useful as the “Globetrotters.”
Frederick:
Whether or not they are media lies is irrelevant. Nor is it crystal clear these things won’t happen. And in fact, the Democrats may do things to make sure they happen in order to further blame the Republicans.
You are living in your own world if you ignore these things.
@neo:You are living in your own world if you ignore these things.
I don’t ignore them. But I see what’s in front of my face. Apologists for Republicans always have too weak/too pure/too dumb as the excuse for continued Republican failure to advance the principles Republicans claim to represent.
I don’t think Republican politicians are dumb or weak or pure. I think they know exactly what they are doing and it is working for them. The “Republican Party” might not do well, but individual Republican officeholders are doing just fine. The system is working as they intend it because we allow it to go on this way and make excuses for why it’s unreasonable to expect better.
All they had to do is nothing to cut spending and keep the debt from growing. There is nothing you can say, neo, that makes that not true.
Yes, it’s possible that in 2024 new people would be elected who would undo make a new deal–but the deal they are making is now considerably worse than a year-and-a-half of cutting spending and keeping the debt from growing. (And did prospect of being punished next election stop the Dems from ramming through Obamacare? HELL NO! And that shows the upper limit on Republican dedication to reining in spending–they care less than the Dems did on Obamacare.) It’s ALWAYS true that a future Congress might undo what a past Congress did. Caving on this deal doesn’t make that not true.
They are kicking the can down the road, at great effort, shafting their base, to do worse than what would happen if they did NOTHING.
It’s jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, it’s never jam today.
And how has it been working for us? What’s it called when you do the same thing over and over and expect a different result?
“There is nothing that you can say, neo, that makes that not true.”
Well that is the final “answer.” Nothing can refute the authority.
Frederick:
I have no idea where you are reading people saying Republicans are pure.
I think it is actually you who are demanding that they be “pure.” Politicians will never be pure and they will never do what you want them to do. They may do parts of it at times, however.
And you deny you were ignoring “those things” that you actually were ignoring in your previous comments on this thread.
After hearing a detailed breakdown of this deal from Casey hendrickson on the radio the Repubs lived up to their reputation as suckers.
@neo:And you deny you were ignoring “those things” that you actually were ignoring in your previous comments on this thread.
Perhaps you are always able to describe everything that is in your mind in every post and every comment, and you never have to pick and choose what to describe in detail, what to just mention, and what to leave out in the interest of focus. If that’s the case for you, then if you didn’t explicitly write it, it might be fair to say you are ignoring it by not explicitly writing it.
It is not the case for me that I can always fit everything present in my mind into a comment. If I go on too long, people tune out and/or complain, if I cut it too short, people accuse me of ignoring or hiding things. Further, while I have a good idea of other things I’ve said in other comments, it’s not reasonable to expect anyone else to have, so even when I have said something more than once in other comments, people who are only reading this one comment may not realize that and may think I’ve never expressed it.
It’s a balance and it’s not an easy one. I don’t say I get that balance right every time.
https://timcast.com/news/conservatives-were-sold-out-once-again-rand-paul-criticizes-biden-mccarthy-debt-ceiling-deal/
House vote:
165 Dems voting “Aye”, 46 “No”
149 Rs voting “Aye”, 71 “No”
More Democrats support it, and fewer oppose it, than Republicans! Essentially this is the Democrats’ “deal” that Republicans are signing on to, rather than the other way around.
And all they had to do was nothing, to ACTUALLY cut spending and keep the debt from growing. Instead, more promises of later “cuts” that aren’t really cuts and won’t happen anyway, the money printer keeps going brrrrrrrrrr with COVID spending now locked in. Just like all the other debt ceiling “deals”….