![]() “Everyone in Washington is going to look terrible if we were actually to go over the brink and default,” former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said in the days before the deal was reached. Many spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal strategy surrounding the talks. This account of the fevered negotiations that followed as the nation careened toward default stems from interviews with more than two dozen lawmakers, outside advisers and congressional and White House aides. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., another key negotiator, said of Biden and McCarthy on Wednesday. “You’ve got two Irish guys that don’t drink,” Rep. It was time to start negotiating, and Biden knew it. ![]() It was up to Biden and McCarthy to break the impasse, McConnell maintained. Back when he was vice president, Biden would reach out to an old colleague from his Senate days, Republican leader Mitch McConnell, to cut budget deals. ![]() Biden worried that the House’s far-right lawmakers were perfectly happy to see the economy collapse if only to damage his re-election chances. “We weren’t going to negotiate with ourselves,” an official said.)Įach side looked at the other with suspicion, if not outright contempt. (A White House aide said Wednesday that Biden and his senior advisers had been conferring with congressional Democrats all along, part of a strategy meant to force Republicans to release a plan of their own. The White House reaction, according to three Democratic sources on Capitol Hill, was “flat-footed” and “surprised.” Biden had “underestimated” McCarthy’s influence in his conference, one said. Then McCarthy, who’d gotten the speaker’s job three months earlier after a tense 15 rounds of voting, muscled through a debt ceiling bill with just one vote to spare on April 26. Republicans had to raise the debt ceiling case closed. economy hostage in exchange for concessions. Dusting off a metaphor from the Obama era, he said he wouldn’t let Republicans hold the U.S. Biden’s stance was simple if ultimately untenable: He wouldn’t negotiate over the debt ceiling. The House passage was a big hurdle, though it’s possible there could be turbulence in the Senate.īoth sides were dug in. ![]() Senate leaders are working to pass the measure quickly. Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., announced a deal Saturday night, and the House passed it Wednesday, capping a 36-day scramble at the White House and on Capitol Hill to avert economic catastrophe ahead of the Treasury Department’s deadline of Monday. Garret Graves, R-La., told reporters Wednesday that had Republicans spurned negotiations and let the nation default on its debt, it would have resulted “in the president trying to invoke the 14th Amendment,” as well as a missed opportunity for Republicans to press for spending cuts.īut that break-glass option wouldn’t be needed. But he took the idea seriously - so seriously that the White House counsel’s office consulted at least two outside legal experts about the 14th Amendment just days before the deal was announced, people familiar with the matter said.Ī lead House negotiator in the showdown with Biden, Rep. President Joe Biden worried that there wasn’t enough time for the inevitable court challenge to play out if he went down that road. ![]()
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