President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy are each loudly proclaiming victory in the deal they finally struck this weekend to raise the debt ceiling.
But let’s be honest: this 11th-hour compromise was as inevitable as it is depressing, with no real winner, and just one big loser – the American people.
As ‘Debt Default’ day, in early June, inched closer, both sides employed the usual brinkmanship.
McCarthy insisted the Democrats had to get real on out-of-control government spending. Biden boldly claimed he would not negotiate under any circumstances. Neither side seemed likely to budge.
But on Sunday, the details of an agreement did indeed emerge. And, really, though some 99 pages in length, the deal document amounts to little more than a $4 trillion spending splurge – with a few paltry cuts on the side.
Contingent on this bill being passed, we will see the debt ceiling suspended for the next two years, while early estimates calculate agreed budget cuts will total $55 billion next year – and $81 billion in 2025.
President Joe Biden (right) and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (left) are each loudly proclaiming victory in the deal they finally stuck this weekend to raise the debt ceiling
Perhaps that sounds significant, but when weighed against the forecast $4 trillion rise in national debt (already $31 trillion) that this deal will precipitate, one begins to realize that McCarthy’s won ‘concessions’ are less a drop in the bucket, than a drop in the infinity pool.
Let us not forget, Biden wrote off as collateral damage some $7 billion worth of American weaponry left behind after his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Clearly, this is a man unconcerned by such meagre sums.
It is also worth putting this new deal into the context of President Obama’s 2011 agreement to stomach some $2.4 trillion in cuts to get his debt limit raised – albeit with protracted timetable of reductions over a decade.
Certainly, then, Florida Governor and presidential-hopeful Ron DeSantis was right to add his voice to the growing number of concerned congressional conservatives on Monday.
‘After this deal, our country will still be careening towards bankruptcy,’ DeSantis said.
And he’s right: the US economy is already burdened by the highest interest rates in a decade and staring down the barrel of a potentially catastrophic recession. Increased spending is the last thing we need.
But can you really blame McCarthy? After all, the odds were not stacked in his favor.
Without the Senate or the White House, Republicans have just a nine-vote edge in the House – the tightest margin in the same number of decades. Whereas, in 2011, Democrats, under Obama, suffered the largest electoral defeat in over 60 years.
Florida Governor and presidential-hopeful Ron DeSantis was right to add his voice to the growing number of concerned congressional conservatives on Monday. ‘After this deal, our country will still be careening towards bankruptcy,’ he said.
This deal is forecast to add $4 trillion to national debt (already $31 trillion).
Now, McCarthy has secured a few goodies in the gift bag for the GOP, including a rise of the age limit of work-requirements for some welfare programs from 49 to 54. There is also the promise of fast-tracked approval for a 303-mile gas pipeline between red-states Virginia and West Virginia.
$21 billion has also been cleaved from the giant new $80 billion Internal Revenue Service (IRS) budget passed last year, mainly intended to hire tens of thousands more agents to audit citizen’s taxes – or, as Senator Ted Cruz put it, ‘to harass Americans.’
This comes as the IRS faces whistle-blower allegations of bias in the Hunter Biden tax-fraud investigation and the increased perception of an institutional intolerance towards conservatives.
Though, as Congressman Dan Bishop quipped on Sunday: ‘There will [now] be 85,260 more IRS agents rather than 87,000 to eat you alive. Big win.’
Certainly, it does all seem like mighty small potatoes. And the problem is, we cannot escape that the American people are being saddled with yet another Biden-fantasyland budget that will continue to inflate the Thanksgiving parade balloon of crippling debt.
And it’s not as if cutting a deal was McCarthy’s only choice. He could have told Biden it was his way or the highway – forcing the nation towards a default.
But it’s hard to see that Republicans would have been rewarded by the public for causing such a crisis – even if the intentions were noble. What’s more, the majority of GOP members wanted a deal.
Ultimately, most of the population’s ire should be directed towards the Democrats – now sickeningly celebrating yet another financial albatross for the American people to bear.
A graph produced by the Congressional Budget Office in February, projecting the rise in federal debt.
It’s not as if cutting a deal was McCarthy’s only choice. He could have told Biden it was his way or the highway – forcing the nation towards a default.
Biden’s track record when it comes to the public purse has been abysmal. And such leviathan planned future spending represents economic illiteracy at best – and sheer contempt for this nation at worst.
The main lesson for Republicans, then, should be the need to win elections – the need to take back the Senate, the White House, and secure real majorities in Congress.
It has been three decades since Bill Clinton famously led his first presidential campaign under the simple banner that the key to electoral success is: ‘The economy, stupid’.
Anyone who doesn’t want to see America decimated under the weight of Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar profligacy must hope that every Republican running in 2024 memorizes that mantra.
