Today is the day. It’s D-Day, and the 435 members of the House of Representatives will hit the beaches, hoping to avoid default. It will be a slog, and it wouldn’t shock me if House Speaker Kevin McCarthy falls short of his deal to increase the debt ceiling for the next two years. It’s a $4 trillion increase but comes with little to no guardrails; it could be unlimited. There’s no cap, and the spending cuts, while touted as an accomplishment by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) of all people, are trivial at best. Regardless, his support guaranteed that the bill would pass the House Rules Committee, which it did last night, and now we expect the vote sometime this evening. Speaker McCarthy faces internal divisions, with the usual suspects on our side of the aisle forming the opposition. It’s not unwarranted.
There are bad portions of this legislation, something you can’t gamble on with a meager five-seat majority, but we’re at a crisis point here. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen gave a June 5 date for the default deadline. It was June 1, but no one knew the actual date. I feel like Yellen extended the deadline like a college professor would for a term paper (via NBC News):
A major debt ceiling bill negotiated by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy passed its first test Tuesday, gaining approval from the Republican-led House Rules Committee and setting up a vote Wednesday in the full chamber.
The vote was 7 to 6, with two Republicans — Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Chip Roy of Texas — and all four Democrats voting no. It sends the bill to the House floor.
The 99-page Fiscal Responsibility Act, which faces heavy criticism from some GOP hard-liners, will need a majority of the House to pass. It is sure to rely on some Democratic votes in the narrowly divided chamber.
If the bill is passed by the House, it would then need to be approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate before the Treasury Department’s deadline of Monday to avert a calamitous default.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., one of three ultraconservatives on the Rules Committee, announced earlier that he planned to vote yes, which all but assured passage through the panel.
“There are things to dislike and things to like about this bill,” Massie said. “When people want to express their ideology, the floor of the House on the actual final passage of the bill is the place to do that.”
Norman described the bill as "smoke and mirrors," arguing that Republicans “should have walked away” from the table after they passed their party-line debt limit legislation and forced Democrats to either swallow it or accept default.
As Katie and Spencer wrote yesterday, the conservative wing has been vocal about this deal being a shambles and teetering on collapse. House Democrats have zero interest, or desire, to help a floundering McCarthy as the chaos that could erupt on the House floor builds their 2024 narrative that the GOP cannot be entrusted with the gavel next year. If they lend a hand, it’ll be at the last possible moment when Speaker McCarthy soaks through his suit should things go sideways. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has offered an alternative to what’s being proposed. Yet, as everyone else has noted, the GOP’s intra-party dramatics is just the beginning. The Democratic-led Senate could also be an area where things go off the rails.
Everyone hold onto their butts.