This speaks to the difficulty of building majorities in the House and Senate for any accord McCarthy and Biden might reach. Because his party’s right wing will oppose anything short of its maximum demands, McCarthy cannot deliver a majority for a deal without large numbers of Democratic votes. They will be hard to get for a proposal remotely as draconian as his ultras want, one reason progressives are pushing Biden to bypass the“Kevin McCarthy does not know how many votes he has,” Rep.
McCarthy also has to wonder if coming to terms with Biden would prompt a challenge to his leadership from hard-liners. He no doubt hoped that Friday’s brief Republican walkout from the talks would persuade his right flank that he’s taking a hard line.Democrats once hoped that enough Republicans who represent districts the president carried in 2020 would be amenable to a clean debt ceiling increase.
Biden’s lieutenants and his allies in Congress insist that they are not repeating the errors of President Barack Obama’s. They say they have already pushed Republicans back from some of their more extreme demands, forced them to make public the sweep of the cuts they originally sought, and are trying
to avoid binding future Congresses to budget decisions won through extortion. And they expect to save Biden’s signature programs on clean energy and student debt. But this sorry episode, made possible by an irrational debt ceiling law that ought to have been repealed long ago, should never have happened. The fact that Americans with the lowest incomes are political pawns in this exercise is a moral stain on our country.