Barely Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s team has come up with a proposal to take to President Joe Biden in debt ceiling negotiations. That’s after they come to an agreement among themselves, which might be the hard part.
Bloomberg confirmed PunchBowl News’ reporting that an actual plan for discussion is in the works. It would lift the debt ceiling until May 2024, with the assumption that the Treasury could take measures to extend it until November, thus making sure it’s a major issue in the election. The strings they attach to that are going to prove unacceptable to the White House and Senate Democrats.
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The House GOP has refined their ask from their previous demands that Biden undo the whole of his term so far. Now they have put numbers to those demands, which are mostly steep cuts to all but defense spending. They added nuking Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. Also making sure people can’t afford to make their homes more energy efficient by repealing some of those tax credits. And, of course, they will demand work requirements for people on social assistance programs. They also want to strip executive branch authority in rule-making on almost everything. So, just a few simple things.
The “Main Street” caucus of Republicans, who cast themselves as the reasonable people, have their own plan, which echoes much of that but also tosses in a “Mandatory Spending Commission” to come up with solutions for “increasing the sustainability of Social Security and Medicare” that “will not include cuts to Medicare or Social Security benefits.” The commission would look at “unnecessary” mandatory spending “unrelated to Medicare and Social Security” to sacrifice in the name of shoring up those programs. In other words, Medicaid.
The White House is not impressed. “If today’s reports are true, Speaker McCarthy is adopting the extreme MAGA House Republican position: threatening our economic recovery, hard-working Americans’ retirement, and catastrophic default in order to force devastating cuts to veterans' health care, education, and other programs that lower costs for working families,” Andrew Bates, deputy White House press secretary, said in response to the reports.
They know this is dead on arrival if it ever makes it out of the House, so that much of it is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is the timeline they appear to be setting for themselves.
That’s Republican Study Committee Chairman Kevin Hern of Oklahoma. The end of the April legislative session is just eight legislative work days away.
What’s more, next week in the House will mostly be taken up by the all-important work of making the lives of trans children even more miserable. They’ll be working on the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act" for most of the week. The bill would amend Title X to ban transgender students from competing in sports designated for women or girls.
The chances that McCarthy can actually get his raucous caucus under control to come up with a debt ceiling plan 218 members agree with are slim enough. The idea that he could do it in eight days is laughable.
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It's never too early to start talking about the House! Joining us on this week's edition of The Downballot is Inside Elections' Jacob Rubashkin, who offers his thoughts on the overall playing field and a wide range of key contests. Jacob explains why Lauren Boebert might have an easier time of it in her likely rematch, how some candidates have a "special sauce" that allows them to keep winning difficult districts, and why he thinks Mary Peltola is favored for re-election despite Alaska's persistent red lean.
Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also marvel at how the Tennessee GOP scored a remarkable own-goal in booting state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, who've now already returned to the chamber with dramatically enhanced profiles; dissect the very obvious ploy by Montana Republicans to tilt the 2024 Senate election their way by changing the primary rules for just that one race; and break down a new Daily Kos Elections analysis of the 23 states that could add protections for abortion rights to their constitutions.
