DEFAULT WEEK

Biden: “One of the things that I heard some of you saying is why doesn't Biden say what a good deal it is? You think that's going to help get it passed? No. That's why you guys don't bargain very well.”

McCarthy’s public pitch since the deal was announced Friday night is that Democrats didn’t get anything they wanted, there are no new taxes while spending is cut, and permitting reform is an added boost. This isn’t actually true, in fact it’s not close to true, but one of the more important rules of negotiating is to let the loser think he won.

So. Now what?

This is not a monumental piece of legislation for Biden, McCarthy or the country. It’s an escape hatch from letting the nutbags turn us into an international target of laughter for shooting ourselves in the foot. Yet it will drive what happens the rest of this year on Capitol Hill legislatively. It will defuse questions over whether the U.S. government will pay its bills. Just the threat of default caused some credit agencies to consider downgrading the United States’ rating for the second time in a dozen years. That would have been very bad.

There’s now one week until a default.

The government runs out of borrowing authority June 5. The House returns tonight for a series of suspension votes, which will let us see where the opposition is and what their power might be.

Here are the challenges McCarthy and Biden face as they head into a crucial week.

The beginning of any process to bring a major bill to the floor is taking it to the House Rules Committee. Rules preps the bill by setting the parameters for debate. A bill of this nature won’t be subject to amendments since opening up the legislation to last-minute changes will kill it.

But getting it out of Rules intact may be a challenge. The committee has nine Republicans and four Democrats. Three conservative Republicans on the panel – Reps. Tom Massie (Ky.), Ralph Norman (S.C.) and Chip Roy (Texas) – have railed against the bill publicly. If all three vote no, GOP leadership will need Democrats to get the bill through Rules and reported to the floor..

Senior House Democratic say it’s the GOP’s responsibility to move the legislation out of Rules and that they don’t intend to provide votes. We shall see. If the three nutballs do what they say they will do and vote against, it will then be a situation where the deal cannot be reported out of Rules without Democratic votes.

The vote count: McCarthy has represented to Democrats that he could provide two-thirds of the vote total for this package, according to sources involved in the talks. That would amount to 140 to 150 votes, which is a very big number.

Right now, the House Republican moderates in the Main Street caucus have publicly supported the deal. That translates to 75 votes.

The problem for (most of) the opponents is that they risk becoming the “names that will live in infamy” as the person(s) who pushed the country into default on its sovereign debt. While Gaetz, and Boebert might welcome that infamy, Marjorie Taylor Greene is already publicly supporting McCarthy - continuing the alliance she made with him during the Speaker elections. Few members of congress will want their most memorable achievement to be withholding or curtailing Social Security benefits, cutting federal salaries, delaying payments to Medicaid providers, and cutting veterans’ benefits, while also crashing the stock market and pissing off everyone everyone with retirement funds invested in the stock market.

Some Freedom Caucus members claim McCarthy promised never to bring a bill to the floor of the House unless all Republican members of the House Rules Committee support it. Chip Roy of Texas tweeted on Saturday: “[D]uring Speaker negotiations to build the coalition, that it was explicit both that nothing would pass Rules Committee without AT LEAST 7 GOP votes - AND that the Committee would not allow reporting out rules without unanimous Republican votes.” Roy knows he and two other extremists on Rules are “no” votes; this would mean that the proposed bill would not get to the floor under the “explicit” agreement allegedly made by McCarthy to gain the Speakership.

However, other Freedom Caucus members say the rules of the Rules Committee do not reflect the “explicit” agreement made by McCarthy.FC member Dusty Johnson said, “ If those conversations took place, the rest of the conference was unaware of them. And frankly, I doubt that. I’m a rules guy. When somebody tells me something has to happen a certain way, the first thing I do is get out the rule book. And when I checked, there wasn’t a rule that something has to come out of the Rules Committee unanimously.”

Two important Freedom Caucus members, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan, have already expressed public support for the deal; the Freedom Caucus is officially fractured.

Since McCarthy is not selfless, it seems unlikely he made a deal that would end his Speakership.

On the Democratic side, there is a lot of unhappiness with this bill among progressives. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union that she was “not happy with some of the things I’m hearing about.”

My email inbox exploded this morning with messages from “Progressive” organizations asking on me to call my Democratic representative and tell him to vote “No” on the deal since it cut one or the other of their sacred cows.

Yeah, that’s going to happen. At least I cleared out my future email traffic by designating each of them “spam,” something I probably should have done awhile ago.

The New Democrat Coalition - which has 100 members - has already stated their support for the deal. If the Problem Solvers Caucus is really composed of problem solvers rather than problem creators, it’s likely they will back it., are likely able to back it. This would give Biden and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries a huge chunk of votes. If McCarthy can deliver two-thirds of the vote total, that would ensure the 218 votes needed for passage.

Josh Marshall had an interesting take on the situation as of this morning:

“I believe we’re seeing signs that Kevin McCarthy has essentially outmaneuvered the core freak brigade in the Freedom Caucus. They’re all saying it’s a terrible deal. But they’re not saying more than that. As we noted over the weekend McCarthy has two critical members of that group on his team Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan.

“It’s true that any of them can force a vote on his speakership at any moment. Then four can withhold their votes and deprive him of office. But no one else wants this job. And no one else in the caucus can get a majority vote. Quite a lot of membership are fed up with the grandstanding and likely appreciate McCarthy getting them through this drama in one piece.

“Given what I said above, McCarthy can see his ouster and say, “Okay, guys, I’m going to the beach. Give me a call when you’ve figured out that you have to elect me all over again.”

“It all depends on what members start hearing in their districts. It could change quickly if Trump starts calling this a betrayal. But until those things happen not only might McCarthy survive this — he might come out of it strengthened against those folks.”

And then there’s the Senate.

The Senate will begin consideration of deal as soon as Thursday, depending on how the House votes tomorrow night.

It will take some Senate magic to pass this legislation before June 5, which is now officially Default Day. It’s unclear right now whether senators like Mike Lee who have threatened to throw up roadblocks will do so.

Senate passage will likely require at least 30 senators from each party to vote for it, which is more than half of each caucus. As in the House, conservative and progressive hardliners won’t vote for this bill.

So where do things stand now?

McConnell said the legislation “sets meaningful limits on the administration’s spending agenda.... Today’s agreement makes urgent progress toward preserving our nation’s full faith and credit and a much-needed step toward getting its financial house in order.”

Some Republican Senators are unhappy with the topline spending figure for the Pentagon. McCarthy countered that Republicans were able to permanently sever any link between defense and non-defense spending increases.

McCarthy also said the long-term spending deal allows Congress to get back to regular order by passing 12 annual spending bills, not a giant omnibus package rushed through at the last minute.

Lindsey Graham suggested he might not back the deal because of the defense cap. In a statement, Graham said House Republicans “compromised our national security for marginal changes on the non-defense side.”

Senator Kevin Cramer, a noted conservative hardliner, had this message for the bill’s conservative critics: Republicans would be “complicit” if the debt limit were raised without any reforms at all, which was the alternative. “It doesn’t cut spending enough and I share the concerns it doesn’t fund the military enough. That said, I don’t see how Kevin and his team could have negotiated a better outcome given the hand they were dealt. I suspect rank and file Democrats are more upset with the White House negotiators than Republicans are with ours.”

Senator Chris Coons said “This is the best deal that could be reached, given the damaging demands of House Republicans. To my colleagues who have serious misgivings about this deal, I say this is far better than defaulting.”

Progressives believe this is a false choice. The main objection is that Biden set a terrible precedent to say no negotiations over the debt limit and then ultimately negotiate.

Through all this, the most important question is whether the compromise will make it through Congress before the US defaults.

Any holdups like a delay in the House floor debate would cost leaders precious time in clearing the bill through both chambers before the expected deadline for maxing out the nation’s borrowing authority.

June 5 is now just a week away.

David Frum points out that both sides could plausibly claim a win: “McCarthy wanted a win on principle: use of the debt ceiling as a weapon. Beyond that, his caucus could not agree on specific demands. Biden yielded on the principle, which opened the way to prevail on the substance. Each got what he most wanted.”

The net effect of the last three months has been to make the U.S. look like a dysfunctional clown show in front of our allies, at a time when we need to be projecting an image of dependability.

That’s a loss for everyone.

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