The debt-ceiling ball is now in Biden’s court, and the party in power is stalling for time.
Democrats have had nearly a week to digest House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s demonstration of relative Republican unity behind his plan to pair a debt-ceiling increase with targeted spending cuts and social-welfare reforms. For the most part, the evidence that the House GOP can block a “clean” debt limit hike hasn’t altered the Democratic position. The party in control of the White House supposedly favors budgetary negotiations, but not when the nation’s credit rating is being held “hostage.”
The Democratic front was beginning to crack even before McCarthy secured the narrow passage of his debt-ceiling bill. Now, a chorus of Democrats is calling on President Biden to desist in his stonewalling of Republican lawmakers while the prospect of national default looms larger by the day.
“It is time to end the partisan standoff and brinkmanship before it rattles markets, damages our economy, and hurts the American people,” read a letter signed by three House Democrats and addressed to both McCarthy and President Joe Biden. They join their House colleagues, Representatives Debbie Dingell (Mich.) and Greg Landsman (Ohio), and Senator Joe Manchin (W. Va.) in calling on the White House to cave to political realities. After all, “the fact of the matter is that it is the only bill actually moving through Congress that would prevent default,” Manchin observed.
So far, the Democrat-led Senate has deferred to the Biden administration’s strategic approach to navigating this impasse. No longer. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer signaled that his caucus is ready to get off the sidelines, but only to demagogue the House GOP’s opening bid and poison the well.
“The Senate will show the public what this bill truly is,” the missive read. “Beginning this week, our Committees will begin to hold hearings to expose the true impact of this reckless legislation on everyday Americans.”
“In backrooms, they pulled together a slew of unpatriotic and harmful policies that would take the country backwards,” it continued. Indeed, by providing Democrats with the very Republican alternative to a clean debt ceiling hike they’ve demanded for weeks, “the MAGA House Republicans’ actions have increased the likelihood of default.”
This might be the Democrats’ best option, but it’s not without risks. As I wrote last week, demagoguery is a two-way street.
Democrats can harp on the Republican Party’s desire to repeal the “historic green energy tax credits” in something called the Inflation Reduction Act all they want, but no one inclined toward Republican politics would find that off-putting — much less surprising. The same could be said of McCarthy’s plan to augment work requirements for eligible, able-bodied recipients of federal welfare benefits. But imposing work requirements for eligible beneficiaries isn’t an unpopular proposition, and highlighting the GOP’s attacks on the climate spending in the Democratic Party’s anti-inflation legislation may have the inadvertent effect of informing voters about what was actually in that bill (of which, as of February, many Americans remained ignorant).
Republicans have earned the right to some grandstanding of their own. Do Democrats really want to risk the nation’s credit rating in a game of chicken in order to preserve, for example, unspent funds allocated to a public-health emergency that’s over? And if that’s not the party’s objection, what is? Democrats (dubiously) insist that they’d love to engage in budget negotiations, but not when the debt ceiling is in play. At the same time, they maintain that it is reckless and negligent to even flirt with the prospect of default. So, which is it? And is the party confident that whichever of these conflicting process arguments they settle on will be cogent enough to attract the support of a majority of their voters?
The debt-ceiling ball is now in Biden’s court, and the party in power is stalling for time. But the party in power appears increasingly at odds with itself over how to manage this oncoming crisis.