Biden plays debt limit games as the US fisc burns
President Biden is still playing irresponsible political games on the debt limit.
Yes, he’s finally agreed to meet with Speaker Kevin McCarthy, setting talks with him (and Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell) — but not ’til next Tuesday.
Why wait a full week, Joe?
The clock is ticking, with (per Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday) less than a month left before Uncle Sam could enter default.
Worse, Biden still insists that even the modest spending cuts in the debt-limit-increase bill (the Limit, Save, Grow Act) that the House GOP passed last week are off the table.
Even though Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, plainly doesn’t have the 60 votes needed to pass the “clean” increase Biden demands in his chamber, or he’d bring it to the floor tomorrow.
So Joe is just stamping on the floor like a bumptious toddler.
Even as the clock ticks down and his Treasury chief flashes a red signal, he’s determined to do small-ball political brinkmanship to score seal claps from his enablers in the media.
McCarthy’s bill is a serious, workable proffer.
It’s garnered praise from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, even as Biden’s been called out by the same.
And it’s the only realistic plan now on offer.
Schumer’s certainly not putting any serious alternative on the table.
The White House needs to make some counteroffer: maybe not everything in the House bill; maybe toss in some genuine, immediate savings not in it.
But some kind of real spending trims will be needed to win continued borrowing ability, as they should be.
The speaker deserves credit here for facing down the president.
Clearly, brute political force is the only thing Joe understands. (He seems to have a serious problem with the whole “cause and effect” thing.)
Look at the idiotic move his inner circle is considering: Instead of dealing with McCarthy, why not simply issue a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the debt limit itself?
(Mainly because you’d lose, and suffer major financial instability while you wasted the time.)
It’s not enough that Biden’s drunken-sailor spending has slammed the US economy while hammering average Americans with inflation.
Or that the technical default Yellen warns about could be the spark to a macro conflagration.
Truth is, Biden’s never had an economic policy beyond handouts to his friends and punishments for his enemies; slimy retail politics have always supplanted any strategy.
If he plays with fire on this long enough, we’re all going to get burned.
