10 months ago
45
The deal President Joe Biden made with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy takes the debt ceiling off the table until Jan. 1, 2025, the remainder of Biden’s current term in the White House. No wonder the Freedom Caucus is so wound up about it! The debt ceiling is the best political hostage ever, even if some of those caucus members seem to question whether default or its consequences are actually real. The other thing the bill does, though you’re not seeing a lot of uproar from the Freedom Caucus maniacs about it yet, is make a potential government shutdown much more politically painful for Republicans. McCarthy might have just negotiated a lot of Republican potency away.
One of the key things the agreement does is disincentivize the other hostage-taking action that Republicans love: holding up funding in order to shut the government down. The deak has a trigger mechanism that ensures that if Republicans do try to shut the government down, they end up making cuts to the thing they love most, next to tax cuts for rich people—defense spending. A shutdown would also force automatic cuts to veterans’ health care, the other thing Republicans have insisted is most important to them since Democrats pointed out just how much they would have taken away from veterans with their original debt ceiling offer.
