The debt limit is now expected to be met by Thursday, Jan. 19. Soon, to prevent falling behind on the payments, Congress is going to have to either spend less or borrow more, though the Treasury Department does have a few tricks up its proverbial sleeve to keep the bills paid a little while longer – through June, perhaps. But whether it’s in January or June, catastrophe is inevitable unless both sides either work together or one gives in. So far, there remains no progress on any semblance of a deal between House Republicans and President Joe Biden to both cut spending and raise or suspend the borrowing cap.
Forget symbolic tax bills they know will never clear the Senate; the battle for the nation’s budget is where the rubber meets the road. This is the first true test of the GOP’s new House majority. As the US careens toward a possible financial disaster, which side will cave first?
2021 Debt Limit Increase: A Double-Edged Sword for Dems
Democrats managed to raise the government’s borrowing limit at the end of 2021 without any support from Republicans aside from Adam Kinzinger, the former representative from Illinois who may have well been mistaken for a Democrat by anyone familiar with his voting record in the 117th Congress. That was to be the left’s big win – a massive debt limit increase that would carry government spending through September of 2023.
But, of course, it didn’t. Free from the pressure of that ceiling so close above them, Congress and the president burned through those borrowed dollars until they ran out of credit – about eight months earlier than originally proposed.
That isn’t the real problem for the left, however. It merely accelerated the inevitable. By pushing the debt limit out across all of 2022 and into 2023, Democrats squandered the leverage a trifecta gave them. As Liberty Nation warned last year, “When next the issue comes up, however, Congress is set to look quite a bit different.” The 2022 midterms didn’t bring the expected red wave, but it still handed the House to Republicans all the same – and the bill has come due.
McCarthy Speaks – But Is Biden Listening?
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said Sunday that he believed the Democrats would agree to a deal that caps government spending to avoid defaulting on the national debt. “I want to sit down with him now so there is no problem,” McCarthy told Fox News, referring to Biden. “I’m sure he knows there’s places that we can change that put America on a trajectory that we save these entitlements instead of putting it into bankruptcy the way they have been spending.” He pointed to the Trump-era agreement to suspend the statutory debt limit until a later date as evidence that such a compromise could happen.
But it seems his pleas have fallen on deaf presidential ears. “We will not be doing any negotiation,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of McCarthy’s suggestion. Instead, Politico reports that the administration is already working behind the scenes to go around Speaker McCarthy by dealing with moderate Republicans. There may be those in the GOP House who are receptive to that – and it could possibly give McCarthy an out, if his only concern is the optics. If some of his own side cross the aisle and help the Democrats raise the debt limit, then he can still say he did his best and fought the good fight.
(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
But the administration’s refusal to even negotiate has reportedly turned off some of those who might otherwise have been the first to cave. “Biden’s comment of zero negotiations is a non-starter,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said. “[Republicans] can’t get 100 percent of what we want with only control of half of Congress, but our voters sent us to D.C. to control spending, so the Democrats have to show some movement our way, too.”
As is ever the case, the debt limit issue has become a game of congressional chicken. In reality, both sides largely want free rein to spend as they please. Some actually hope for a tighter budget – but for most it seems to be merely a matter of making the other side out to be the bad guys so that voters will make the “correct” choice in the next election and keep those donation dollars flowing. That, along with the desperate desire not to be seen as the bad guys themselves, is likely why the GOP almost always eventually acquiesces and allows higher spending and borrowing caps. Is that what will happen this year, or will the new Republican majority in the House make good on its promise to hold tight the purse strings for a more balanced budget? This is their moment of truth – and America is watching.
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