But it also would have left him no choice but to allow a vote on something that would win the support of most Democrats and a handful of Republicans. One of the ironies of this bill, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Jonathan Bernstein has pointed out, is that it puts the country further from, not closer to, a deal.įailure to pass the bill would have been humiliating for McCarthy. Thus began his quest to assemble a package that could pass the House. And from a practical standpoint, it just wasn’t possible to negotiate with House Republicans - especially since McCarthy had no stated bargaining position and hadn’t shown the ability to muster the votes for any deal he did assemble. President Joe Biden’s position, understandably, has been that he deserves the kind of “clean” debt ceiling increases that his predecessor got on multiple occasions. He’s spent months calling on the White House to negotiate with him on a package of spending cuts paired with a debt limit increase. The House bill was mainly a way for the speaker to solve a problem in his caucus. But first, it’s necessary to understand how House Speaker Kevin McCarthy got the country to this impasse. The upshot is that a panic is probably going to come one of these days, and then someone’s going to have to step in and broker a deal quickly.Įnter Mitch McConnell. This sets up a paradoxical interplay: Nobody is panicking because they think there will be a deal, but nobody is trying to make a deal because people aren’t panicking.
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