President Joe Biden has articulated his strategy when it comes to negotiating with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy this week — and Biden’s strategy has a surprising proponent in former President Donald Trump, who has articulated Biden’s position as well as anyone.
With the debt ceiling deadline looming, Biden has drawn a clear distinction between budget negotiations and the need to raise the debt ceiling so that the U.S. avoids an unnecessary and catastrophic default.
Biden’s distinction, at the heart of his strategy, is this: Budget items — what the U.S. spends going forward — are negotiable (even if the two sides are currently miles apart), but raising the debt limit (to pay for what the U.S. has already spent) is not negotiable.
The shorthand is that the budget and the debt are two discrete issues, which shouldn’t be conflated.
America is not a deadbeat nation.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 3, 2023
We have never, ever failed to pay our debt. But MAGA Republicans are engaged in reckless hostage-taking by threatening to force America into default. It’s dangerous and wrong.
McCarthy, on the other hand, continues to say his cooperation on the debt limit relies upon forward-looking budget considerations. The Speaker has said repeatedly that he will resist raising the debt ceiling until he has won certain partisan concessions considered in his “Limit, Save, Grow” proposal, a bill Democrats call the “Default On America” bill.
Biden has strong support for his position among Democrats in the House and Senate, who believe playing a game of chicken with the debt harms the U.S. in irreparable (and avoidable) ways. Many Republicans also recognize, despite their frustrations with the administration, that the need to raise the debt limit is a reality — a painful reality, perhaps, but reality nonetheless.
Chief among the GOP elite who respect and understand Biden’s position on the debt is Trump, who speaking from the White House in 2019 articulated his contempt for McCarthy’s strategy to use the debt ceiling as a “negotiating wedge.”
Trump notes that the U.S. has the “highest rated credit in history” and asserts it would be foolhardy to squander it over any negotiation.
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
“I can’t imagine anybody ever even thinking of using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge,” Trump says. Trump reveals that he’d asked Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi: would anyone ever use the debt ceiling to negotiate?
Trump answers the question starkly, without ambiguity: “Absolutely not. That’s a sacred element of our country. They can’t use the debt ceiling to negotiate.” Trump, like Biden, says that McCarthy’s current strategy is indefensible.
