CNN
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President Joe Biden’s promise to the world that “America is back” after a period of political turmoil looks a little shaky after a debt showdown with Republicans forced him to cut short an Asia-Pacific trip designed to showcase the US power amid challenge from China.
A trickle of progress in Biden’s White House talks with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy came too late to save his swing in Papua New Guinea and Australia next week — an international embarrassment that won’t go away unnoticed by Chinese President Xi Jinping who promotes his nationalist authoritarian capitalism. as an alternative to the crunching democracies of the West.
Biden will still leave for the G7 summit in Japan on Wednesday, but he clearly reasoned that he had to return to Washington earlier than planned next week as a crisis inexorably builds as Republicans seek to extract deep spending cuts in exchange for lift the government’s borrowing authority.
His decision reflects the reality that his presence will be critical to resolving Washington’s most dangerous political dispute of his presidency that threatens to push the United States, a supposed haven of global financial stability, into default on its debt obligations before on June 1
And it shows that a hint of progress in Biden’s Oval Office talks with McCarthy on Tuesday did little to slow the countdown in the race to a potential catastrophe that could tear apart the economy and threaten pensions, benefits and the financial security linked to the market of millions of Americans. .
While such an outcome would shake the global economy, in which the interests of the United States and China are intertwined, it would represent a major propaganda victory for America’s enemies and would severely damage Washington’s claims to reliable global leadership long-term.
It’s an extraordinary scenario for the rest of the world to wonder if the US will pay its debts. And that will be a huge distraction when Biden shows up in Japan.
In other Tuesday news:
Biden and McCarthy agreed to name representatives for direct negotiations with each other in a minor sign of progress.
However, there were early signs of Democratic anxiety over potential concessions Biden might offer, with Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman attacking McCarthy’s “red line” of stricter work requirements for Medicaid recipients as a condition of the agreement
There is also growing concern on Wall Street that an unprecedented debt crash could lead to a recession. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down about 1%. Meanwhile, a coalition of CEOs wrote in a letter to Biden and congressional leaders that failure to comply would lead to “a devastating scenario … and potentially disastrous consequences.”
Biden insisted Tuesday that his meeting with McCarthy and other congressional leaders was productive, and the speaker said he was encouraged that the talks were “a little more” helpful than a previous round.
But the reality is this: The differences between the two parties in policy and political dynamics, namely a radical Republican House and a small majority that makes McCarthy a flexible speaker vulnerable to extremists, have not changed at all.
So the crisis is indeed getting worse, a factor in the appointment of Republican Rep. Garret Graves to negotiate with Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young and White House aide Steve Ricchetti on the debt limit .
“Nothing has been resolved in this negotiation. The only thing that has changed is that we finally have a format that has proven to work in all the years of the past,” McCarthy said.
American University School of Public Affairs professor Thomas Kahn, who was the longest-serving House Appropriations Committee staff director in history, said that while he was positive that both sides were talking, the incremental nature of the staff announcement reflected the massive gaps. what are left
“The parties could not agree on the substance, so they agreed on the process,” he said.
Maneuvering in the White House and on Capitol Hill on Tuesday also hinted at a shift in the politics of that process. After months of insisting that Biden would not negotiate spending cuts to secure an increase in the debt ceiling as a reward for Republican “hostage-taking,” the White House now appears to be doing just that.
That doesn’t mean Democrats will accept a Republican bill that raises the debt ceiling that includes big spending cuts already passed in the House. And any compromise could still come in the form of budget deals that allow the president to insist he didn’t renege on his promise never to give the GOP the debt ceiling limit. But it appears to show that Democrats have given up hope of a “clean bill” that would raise the debt limit without concessions.
“We need to come to common ground,” said Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “That’s the only way this has ever been done. It’s never ended with one party saying, ‘You’ve got to do it my way.’ You’ve got to bring both sides together in both houses.” .
But avoiding catastrophe will not be as simple as achieving a classic Washington deal between Biden and McCarthy.
There are questions about McCarthy’s political ability and prowess. For example, he was only able to pass what was effectively a token debt ceiling bill and a Republican wish list in the House last month by a single vote because of his slim majority, despite making multiple concessions to members of the far-right Freedom Caucus.
So while he appears to have claimed a concession by getting Biden to negotiate, his own House conference may not have accepted his victory.
And it’s also doubtful that the speaker can pass any deal that would be satisfactory to Biden and Senate Democrats through his radical House conference. While Republicans have every right to seek spending cuts after running on this platform in the midterm elections, their choice of the debt ceiling showdown as a moment of leverage risks having disastrous consequences. And there is a strain of absolutism in the House GOP that sees compromise as a defeat, a feeling that may have been exacerbated by former President Donald Trump downplaying the impact of a default at a CNN town hall last week past (Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that if the government ran out of cash, it would have to choose which bills to pay, meaning, for example, that some citizens might not receive their benefits or that staff at the active duty may not receive their wages).
McCarthy doesn’t have much of a political safety net. One way to raise the debt ceiling could be to build a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats to isolate extremists from their own party. But if he tried, he would likely pay by losing a job he has chased for years after accepting a rule that means a single member can call a vote to oust the speaker to win the votes of radicals in his bid for at the head work
The substance of any deal also seems deeply problematic.
McCarthy says any deal must contain new work requirements for some recipients of some federal benefits. But Fetterman, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, warned Tuesday that the plan would cut food assistance for nearly 40,000 people in the commonwealth.
“I cannot in good conscience support a debt ceiling proposal that pushes people into poverty,” Fetterman said.
The duration of a debt ceiling increase could also be an issue.
Having put Biden on the table, McCarthy would clearly like to bring him back in a year or so to try to weaken him at a critical time in his re-election bid. Many Democrats want a deal that pushes the politically dangerous need to raise the debt ceiling beyond the next election.
There is also a logistical problem. It takes time to get a bill through the Senate, the House and Biden’s desk. Both chambers could potentially vote on a short-term extension to raise the debt ceiling to allow time for further negotiations. But McCarthy’s ability to win one vote, let alone two, is in question.
“The clock is absolutely ticking, and I think the obstacles are huge,” Kahn said.
The political risks of Biden leaving the country two weeks before a potentially damaging financial crisis are high. If talks pan out over the next few days, Republicans are likely to accuse him of being more concerned with dating foreigners than Americans. But not traveling at all would have been a disaster for his foreign policy, especially at a time when he wants to use the G7 summit of industrialized democracies to bolster global support for Ukraine ahead of its expected spring offensive against forces of Russian invasion.
Biden told reporters Tuesday evening that “the nature of the presidency is addressing many of the critical issues at once.”
Although his trip will be cut short, a friend as loyal as Australia is unlikely to take offense at a time when it is becoming even more of a linchpin of US military policy. But the postponement meant that a Quad summit in Sydney between the leaders of Japan, the US, Australia and India had been cancelled.
Talks, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, could still continue in Japan, where the leaders of the four nations will be at the weekend.
Diplomats in Asia, where every geopolitical reverberation is scrutinized for its impact on a broader strategic canvas, highly value US presidents appearing in person to bolster Washington’s claims to be a key regional power. So Biden’s quick trip to Japan will be appreciated, but the shortened itinerary will still deal a blow to US prestige and deepen concerns that US domestic political instability threatens US global resilience.
