House GOP revolt brews after debt deal
What happened
President Biden took a victory lap this weekend after signing the bipartisan bill to raise the debt ceiling, even as his negotiating partner, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, faced a revolt from the far-right House Freedom Caucus. The final vote on the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which passed the House 314-117 and gained the support of nearly twothirds of the Senate, “was far more bipartisan than anyone thought was possible,” Biden said in his first televised address from the Oval Office. “No one got everything they wanted, but the American people got what they needed.” The deal to suspend the $31.4 trillion borrowing limit until January 2025 included only a few of the spending cuts Republicans had asked for but did keep discretionary spending flat. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who had warned that without action the U.S. would enter default by June 5, precipitating a global financial crisis, said the deal protects U.S. credit and preserves U.S. financial leadership.
House Freedom Caucus members accused McCarthy of breaking key promises, such as his pledge that no bill would pass with more Democratic votes than Republican. In a show of force this week, 11 caucus members denied McCarthy a procedural vote on four pieces of legislation overriding bans on gas stoves, halting House business for several hours. It was the first failed House rules vote in 21 years. McCarthy’s leadership is unusually precarious: Under the agreement that gave him the speakership in January, a single representative can call a snap vote for his ouster. None has yet done so, but members say they intend to keep up the pressure. “We’re frustrated at the way this place is operating,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). “We’re not going to live in the era of the imperial speaker anymore.”
What the editorials said
Divided government sometimes makes compromise necessary, said The Wall Street Journal. The deal’s conservative detractors “have every right to gripe” that it left Biden’s legislative agenda “largely intact.” Still, “what did they expect?” If McCarthy had refused to budge, he could have been blamed for a catastrophic default. The GOP’s hard-right flank must stop threatening to “mount a circular firing squad to depose McCarthy.” If they wanted more political victories, “they should have won more election victories.”
“Let there be no moral equivalency” between Biden, who insisted on a clean debt limit extension, and McCarthy, “who took the full faith and credit of the government hostage,” said The Washington Post. Still, both men are to be commended for reaching across the aisle and compromising, something Biden has always championed. The deal is “a victory for basic governance when U.S. democracy’s capacity for it was increasingly doubtful. The center held.”
What the columnists said
Biden pulled off “a negotiating coup,” said Matthew Yglesias in
The New York Times, saying little in public, but getting the job done behind the scenes. The “contrast between a president who used to play a dealmaker character on television and one who used to make deals in Congress is striking.” And the results speak for themselves: He made a few concessions on spending and on welfare requirements, but most of his biggest legislative achievements, including the huge energy bill he passed last year, remain intact.
Yet McCarthy wasn’t the loser, said Matthew Continetti in National Review. His great test as speaker was whether he could force Biden to negotiate—something the president had said he wouldn’t do— and then clinch a deal that would earn Republican support. “The grade is in. He aced the exam.” Unlike Biden’s popularity, which has plunged since January, McCarthy’s net approval rating is up by double digits, and he’s “shaping up to be the most effective House GOP leader in decades.”
The crisis was averted, barely, but that doesn’t mean everything is rosy, said John Cassidy in The New Yorker. The debt-rating agency Fitch has “sounded a discordant note,” saying it might still downgrade the U.S.’s sterling AAA credit rating. It cited “repeated political standoffs” over the debt ceiling and bipartisan unwillingness to tackle the real source of the deficits: Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlements. Meanwhile, one of McCarthy’s negotiators, Garret Graves, (R-La.) said the Republicans might force a government shutdown over spending this fall. “It never ends.”