Biden and McCarthy reach a final deal to avoid U.S. default
WASHINGTON ❯❯ With days to spare before a potential first-ever government default, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached final agreement Sunday on a deal to raise the nation's debt ceiling and worked to ensure enough support in Congress to pass the measure in the coming week.
The Democratic president and Republican speaker spoke with each other Sunday evening as negotiators rushed to draft and post the bill text so lawmakers can review compromises that neither the hardright or left flank is likely to support. Instead, the leaders are working to gather backing from the political middle as Congress hurries toward votes before a June 5 deadline to avert a damaging federal default.
“The agreement prevents the worst possible crisis, a default, for the first time in our nation's history,” Biden said. “Takes the threat of a catastrophic default off the table.”
The president urged both parties in Congress to come together for swift passage. “The speaker and I made clear from the start that the only way forward was a bipartisan agreement,” he said.
The compromise announced late Saturday includes spending cuts but risks angering some lawmakers as they take a closer look at the concessions. Biden told reporters at the White House upon his return from Delaware that he was confident the plan will make it to his desk.
McCarthy, too, was confident in remarks at the Capitol: “At the end of the day, people can look together to be able to pass this.”
The days ahead will determine whether Washington is again able to narrowly avoid a default on U.S. debt, as it has done many times before, or whether the global economy enters a potential crisis.
In the United States, a default could cause financial markets to freeze up and spark an international financial crisis. Analysts say millions of jobs would vanish, borrowing and unemployment rates would jump, and a stockmarket plunge could erase trillions of dollars in household wealth. It would all but shatter the $24 trillion market for Treasury debt. Anxious retirees and others were already making contingency plans for missed checks, with the next Social Security payments due soon as the world watches American leadership at stake.
McCarthy and his negotiators portrayed the deal as delivering for Republicans though it fell well short of the sweeping spending cuts they sought. Top White House officials were briefing Democratic lawmakers and phoning some directly to try to shore up support.
One surprise was a provision important to influential Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., giving congressional backing for the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline, a natural gas project, that is certain to raise questions.
Negotiators also agreed to some Republican demands for increased work requirements for food stamps recipients that
Democrats had called a nonstarter.
McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol on Sunday that the agreement “doesn't get everything everybody wanted,” but that was to be expected in a divided government. Privately, he told lawmakers on a conference call that Democrats “got nothing.”
Biden and McCarthy spoke by phone Saturday evening and agreed in principle to the deal, finishing it up Sunday with the 99-page legislative text made public.
Support from both parties will be needed to win congressional approval before the projected June 5 government default on U.S. debts. Lawmakers are expected to return from the Memorial Day weekend Tuesday, and McCarthy has promised lawmakers he will abide by the rule to post any bill for 72 hours before voting in the House as soon as Wednesday.
It would next go to the Senate, where Republican leader Mitch McConnell said senators “must act swiftly and pass this agreement without unnecessary delay.”
Central to the compromise is a two-year budget deal that would essentially hold spending flat for 2024, while boosting it for defense and veterans, and capping increases at 1% for 2025. That's alongside raising the debt limit for two years, pushing the volatile political issue past the next presidential election.
Driving hard to impose tougher work requirements on government aid recipients, Republicans achieved some of what they wanted. It ensures people ages 49 to 54 with food stamp aid would have to meet work requirements if they are able-bodied and without dependents. Biden was able to secure waivers for veterans and homeless people.
AUSTIN, TEXAS ❯❯ The historic impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was just the first round of a Republican brawl over whether to banish one of their own in America's biggest red state after years of criminal accusations.
Paxton and his allies, from former President Donald Trump to hardright grassroots organizations across Texas, now wait to fight back in what Paxton hopes will be a friendlier arena: a trial in the state Senate.
It was unclear Sunday when this will take place. The Republican-led Senate met to pass bills in the final days of the legislative session. But the chamber's presiding officer, Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, did not address the Paxton impeachment.
Paxton has said he has “full confidence” as he awaits a Senate trial. His conservative allies there include his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, who has not said whether she will recuse herself from the proceedings to determine whether her husband will be permanently removed from office.
For now, Texas' threeterm attorney general is immediately suspended after the state House of Representatives on Saturday impeached Paxton on 20 articles.
The decisive 121-23 vote amounted to a clear rebuke from the GOP-controlled chamber after nearly a decade of Republican lawmakers taking a mostly muted stance on Paxton's alleged misdeeds, which include felony securities fraud charges from 2015 and an ongoing FBI investigation into corruption accusations.
He is just the third sitting official in Texas' nearly 200year history to have been impeached.
“No one person should be above the law, least not the top law officer of the state of Texas,” said Republican state Rep. David Spiller, who was part of a House investigative committee that this week revealed it had quietly been looking into Paxton for months.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has remained silent about Paxton all week, including after Saturday's impeachment. Abbott, who was the state's attorney general prior to Paxton's taking the job in 2015, has the power to appoint a temporary replacement pending the outcome in the Senate trial.
Final removal of Paxton would require a two-thirds vote in the Senate, where Republican members are generally aligned with the party's hard right.
A group of Senate Republicans issued identical statements late Saturday and Sunday saying they “welcome and encourage communication from our constituents.” But the group also said they now consider themselves jurors and will not discuss the Paxton case.
Paxton, 60, decried the outcome in the House moments after scores of his fellow partisans voted for impeachment.
“The ugly spectacle in the Texas House today confirmed the outrageous impeachment plot against me was never meant to be fair or just,” Paxton said. “It was a politically motivated sham from the beginning.”
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