Democrats and Republicans have different names for the bill House Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently pushed through as part of his strategy to win concessions from the Biden White House — using the country’s precarious debt limit as an endgame.
The Republicans call the bill “Limit, Save, Grow” — and intend to use it as leverage in exchange for their cooperation in raising the debt ceiling when Biden and McCarthy meet this week on the issue. The Democrats call the McCarthy legislation the “Default On America” bill — which conveniently boils down to the acronym DOA, which Dems insist it is — Dead On Arrival, that is.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chair of the Senate Budget Committee, has been particularly vocal in attacking the GOP proposal, calling it an “oily wish list written by polluters, for polluters.”
Whitehouse goes on to say that “275 out of 315 pages of the MAGA bill are devoted to giveaways to the fossil fuel industry.” That’s 87 percent.
Sen. Whitehouse is referencing, among other oil industry-friendly pieces of McCarthy’s proposal, a section called “Repeal Market Distorting Green Tax Credits.” That needs no translation.
Agreeing with Whitehouse, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also excoriated McCarthy’s push to slash the royalty rate oil companies must pay to lease federal land.
The #DefaultOnAmerica Act is an oily wish list written by polluters, for polluters.
— Senate Budget Committee (@SenateBudget) May 8, 2023
In fact, 275 out of 315 pages of the MAGA bill are devoted to giveaways to the fossil fuel industry.
The D.O.A. is dead on arrival. https://t.co/XIMj3iMWIb
McCarthy, on the other hand, has been retweeting Utah Senator Mike Lee‘s claim that the Senate GOP has “more than enough votes in the Senate to stop any bill raising the debt ceiling without substantive spending and budgetary reforms.”
Lee presents as evidence of this claim a letter with 43 Republican signatures.
House and Senate Republicans agree: raising the debt limit without getting spending under control would be irresponsible. https://t.co/4Yzy36hHUW
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) May 6, 2023
What McCarthy is doing — using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge — has been slammed as a self-defeating strategy by both Democrats and Republicans in the past, including Donald Trump who said “I can’t imagine anybody ever even thinking of using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge. That’s a sacred element of our country. They can’t use the debt ceiling to negotiate.”
