The countdown to economic catastrophe continues! President Joe Biden is set to meet with congressional leaders today in a last-ditch effort to avoid a default crisis. According to the Treasury Department, which keeps track of these things, the government will run out of money on June 1, the same day I run out of youth, and all the post-dated checks in the world can’t prevent a recession unless Congress raises the debt ceiling. House Republicans are holding the debt limit for ransom and demanding extreme budget cuts and policy concessions. Biden in turn has told them to go climb their thumbs.
Matthew Yglesias wrote for Bloomberg a few weeks ago that “Only Mitch McConnell Can Save the US From Default,” and suggested that the Senate minority leader, who’s not totally in the MAGA tank, would cut a last-minute deal with Biden. Shockingly, Yglesias was wrong. While gabbing on the phone last week, McConnell informed Biden that he wouldn’t offer his old Senate buddy a fiscal lifeboat. Biden would have to come to an arrangement with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, period.
“This is the very same advice I gave Donald Trump after the Democrats took the House. It wasn’t the first thing on their mind to negotiate with Nancy Pelosi. But they did,” McConnell said, conveniently ignoring that Pelosi wasn’t a sock puppet for crackpots, extremists, and outright nihilists. “My advice in private is the same as I’ve been saying publicly … quit wasting time here. And in the end, the deal will be made between McCarthy and Biden.”
In advance of today’s meeting, McConnell slammed Biden on the Senate floor, claiming that the president was “M.I.A.” and that “months of inaction … have left our nation drifting toward economic disaster.”
Wow, it turns out McConnell is quite the nefarious operator. Who would’ve guessed, except for anyone paying attention?
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Debt Ceiling Update: Joe Biden Still Not Negotiating With MAGA Terrorists
House Speaker McCarthy Ready To BURN IT ALL DOWN
House Republicans Finally Deliver Debt Ceiling Ransom Note
This strengthens McCarthy’s negotiating position at a time when members of Biden’s own party (sort of) are undermining him. Sen. Joe Manchin has told reporters that Biden should make a deal with McCarthy, and Kyrsten Sinema from the Sinema Party publicly stated Sunday during her self-serving “Face the Nation” interview that “the votes don’t exist” for a “just a simple clean debt limit.” Instead, Biden should face reality and let McCarthy and his MAGA saboteurs shred most of Biden’s legislative achievements.
Reportedly, some Democrats still privately believe that McConnell will swoop in and save the day. These people might also fall victim to Nigerian prince scams. Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis from Wyoming insists that McConnell is ride or die with McCarthy “until hell freezes.” McConnell would probably have hell’s local temperature saved on his weather app.
Sen. Joni Ernst from Iowa doesn’t even think McConnell will say much during the meetings, which is sort of a classic Godfather move. “He’s like: ‘I’m here to support McCarthy.’”
So, Senate Republicans, including leadership, are fully aligned behind McCarthy. You might say everything’s coming up McCarthy, if you wanted to bastardize a musical theatre classic. Nonetheless, Biden can’t help feeling sorry for the guy who’ll willingly send the nation plummeting into financial ruin.
“I think he’s in the position, well, he had to make a deal and that was pretty — you know, 15 votes. Fifteen votes that where he had — just about sold away everything that he — at the far, far Right,” Biden said last week. “There’s the Republican Party and there’s the MAGA Republicans, and the MAGA Republicans really have put him in a position where in order to stay speaker he has to agree — he’s agreed to things that, maybe he believes, but are just extreme.”
Biden has described McCarthy as an “honest man,” but someone who sells their soul for a speaker’s gavel and some Pez doesn’t seem that trustworthy. McCarthy is a MAGA Republican now. If MAGA Republicans had cards, he’d openly carry one. McConnell has also demonstrated that there’s little distinction between MAGA Republicans and “your father’s Republican Party.” (It pains me to admit that the latter more aptly describes Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh’s GOP.)
According to a Washington Post poll, Americans will likely blame both parties equally for a disastrous debt default: Thirty-nine percent of respondents (correctly) say that congressional Republicans put us in this dire situation, while 36 percent of respondents pin the blame on Biden and Democrats. Those people are stupid but they still vote.
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