Moderates win on debt-ceiling — despite Biden’s obstructionism
That wasn’t so hard: The Senate on Friday overwhelmingly passed legislation with bipartisan support, 63-36, to raise the debt ceiling along with the first major rollback of federal spending ever.
That followed a similarly lopsided bipartisan House vote on the bill, 314-117.
President Joe Biden signed the bill Saturday.
For all the down-to-the-wire acrimony, dishonesty and vile salvos lobbed during debate on this issue, a majority of level-headed moderates in both parties wound up clobbering the extremists on their respective flanks.
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Kudos, most of all, to Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for pulling this out, not only by striking an acceptable (if far, far from perfect) deal with Biden but beating down his party’s fringe.
The bill avoids default (or, alternatively, a shutdown of some government services) and applies, for the first time, some gentle brakes to the monstrous outlays OK’d by Republicans and Democrats alike during COVID — and recklessly continued by Biden and Dems long after the crisis ended.
Of course, not everyone was gracious about the outcome.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries thanked Dems for ensuring “we push back the extreme MAGA Republican efforts to jam right-wing cuts down the throats of the American people.”
“Tonight I’ll be voting NO on Republicans’ hostage bill that maliciously weaponized the debt limit,” tweeted an eternally out-of-touch Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY).
“With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?” asked Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who voted against the bill.
Biden at least praised McCarthy, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and others.
Yet for months he and his aides made this into a needless bout of brinkmanship, threatening nonsense about economic collapse unless Republicans refrained from trying to control spending.
Truth is, Republicans who gripe that the bill doesn’t do enough to rein in outlays are right. But they’ll need to get more like-minded members of Congress elected if they want to take it further.
