How Joe Biden got it done

The House finally passed a deal on the debt ceiling – one that will avoid a default through the year 2025. It actually feels a whole lot more anticlimactic than you’ve been led to believe if you’ve watched any of the coverage concerning it. With plenty of time to spare, even despite getting four extra days, President Biden reached an agreement with the House GOP where he essentially got most of what Democrats supported, keeping it intact, while the GOP paid a heavy price for a few crumbs.

Despite the drama that news media was trying to drum up while keeping a number of us angry at our own party yet again, there are two important factors here: Kevin McCarthy can’t even get leverage as House Speaker with at least half of his own party looking to replace him AND the Democratic Party once again saved the US economy from total ruin. That should be a constant talking point going into 2024, regardless of what new distraction the GOP is trying to come up with by that point.

Despite McCarthy trying to spin his deal as a win, more Democrats voted for the deal than Republicans in the end – so it makes it that much easier to spin this as a major victory for Democrats, while the watered down work requirements in the bill actually have the net effect of causing an increase in SNAP benefits, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office.

While the news media is frustrated with being kept in the dark for much of these negotiations and scoffing at messages about cooperation, the Republicans are also being kept in the dark – thinking there’s no strategy only to get steamrolled – and even trying to spin it with PR just gets them fighting amongst each other.