House Speaker Kevin McCarthy stepped to the podium and gave voice to multiple frustrations as he and his team still find themselves “far apart” on the debt ceiling negotiations with the White House.
“It didn’t seem like it would be this hard,” McCarthy said, filling in a backstory that, he said, led him to believe the situation wouldn’t come to this.
Even before McCarthy became Speaker, he said, he spoke to incoming Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries about getting the debt ceiling lifted. He spoke with President Biden about it in February, he said, soon after becoming Speaker.
McCarthy also — in an unusual note — talked about how the Democrats didn’t need him in order to raise the debt limit.
They “could have raised the debt ceiling prior to me becoming Speaker,” McCarthy said.
“They knew the outcome of the election already, they knew we were taking power. They passed an Omnibus bill but they decided not to do the rising of the debt ceiling even though they thought people should just raise it cleanly.”
President Biden has 8 days left to avoid becoming the first president in history to default on the debt. https://t.co/N51zsgDdEz
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) May 24, 2023
Evidently, like McCarthy, some Democrats also didn’t think “it would be this hard.”
McCarthy struck a wistful tone — “don’t blame me,” he repeated several times — as if he regretted that the Democrats didn’t take this measure, which would have been accomplished through budget reconciliation, a move Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) opposed.
[NOTE: “Sen. Bernie Sanders proposed raising the debt limit through budget reconciliation,” reports The Independent, “which would have allowed Democrats to sidestep a Republican filibuster.”]
Now McCarthy is stuck trying to win concessions on the budget using the debt ceiling as a “negotiation wedge,” a maneuver that even former President Donald Trump warned was foolhardy and wrong (see below).
President Trump on the debt ceiling: "I said, I remember, to Sen. Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, 'Would anyone ever use that to negotiate with?' They said 'absolutely not.' That's a sacred element of our country. They can't use the debt ceiling to negotiate." pic.twitter.com/WvI6j4nqMQ
— The Hill (@thehill) July 19, 2019
Did McCarthy create his own inescapable situation? One reporter asked him if he couldn’t complete a satisfactory negotiation because he didn’t have room to move, being beholden to every component of his “Limit, Save, Grow” bill by a far right congressional contingent that won’t countenance compromise.
To the implication that McCarthy’s hands were tied, the Speaker replied: “They’re wrong. You know you underestimate me the whole time.”
