Joe Biden And Kevin Mccarthy Nearing Agree On Debt Ceiling Bill

After weeks of uncertainty and tension, reports indicate that Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is nearing a deal with Joe Biden on raising the debt ceiling in exchange for cutting some government spending. But nothing is done until it is passed, and both the House and Senate have to approve whatever compromise emerges in order to prevent a US government default that could happen as soon 1 June. At the Treasury, they’re not taking any chances – the Wall Street Journal reports that officials have dusted off a plan in case the limit is not lifted in time.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• Ron DeSantis is trying to make the most of yesterday’s campaign announcement on Twitter, which was marred by the site’s prevalent technical glitches.
• Centrist Democrats are annoyed that McCarthy has allowed House lawmakers to head home for the Memorial Day weekend without resolving the debt standoff first.
• Kamala Harris paid tribute to rock’n’roll star Tina Turner, who died yesterday, aged 83.

The Treasury is preparing for the possibility that Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling on time, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Officials have turned to a plan drawn up in 2011 during a previous debt limit standoff between Democrats and Republicans that resulted in a major credit agency downgrading America’s rating for the first time ever.

Twelve years later, the Journal reports that the goal is much the same now as it was then: prevent as much damage to the country’s financial reputation as possible if Washington’s leaders can’t reach an agreement by early June, the approximate deadline when the US will exhaust its cash on hand.

Here’s more from their story:

Under the backup plan created for a debt-limit breach, federal agencies would submit payments to the Treasury no sooner than the day before they are due, the people familiar with the talks said. That would represent a change from the current system, in which agencies may submit payment files well before their due dates. The Treasury processes them on a rolling basis, often ahead of the deadlines. Some payments are already sent to the Treasury one day early, one person said.

If the Treasury can’t make a full day’s worth of payments, it would likely delay payments until it has enough cash to pay the full day’s worth of bills, the people familiar with the matter said. The plan has been discussed across the government, but the Treasury hasn’t instructed agencies to change how they pay bills.

The centrist New Democrat Coalition has condemned Kevin McCarthy and the House Republicans for adjourning the chamber ahead of the long Memorial Day weekend without resolving the debt ceiling standoff.

“House Republicans are skipping town –– willing to risk the full faith and credit of the United States and plunge the country into an unprecedented crisis,” read a statement from Annie Kuster, the chair of the House caucus.

“As Speaker McCarthy remains beholden to the most extreme elements of his party, New Dems are committed to working with responsible Republicans to advance a solution that will pass the House and Senate. As lawmakers, we have a responsibility to rise above partisanship and act in the best interest of our nation. There is no time to waste.”

Biden and McCarthy could be nearing a debt ceiling deal, reports say

Joan E Greve

Reports indicate that Joe Biden and the House speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, are nearing an agreement on a bill that would raise the debt ceiling through the 2024 election, which would allow the president to avoid another standoff until after voters go to the polls.

That proposal is already receiving pushback on the far right, underscoring that McCarthy will likely need Democratic votes to get any bipartisan bill through the House.

“Kevin McCarthy is on the verge of striking a terrible deal to give away the debt limit [through] Biden’s term for little in the way of cuts,” said Russ Vought, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget under Donald Trump.

“Nothing to crush the bureaucracy. They are lining up Democrats to pass it. The DC cartel is reassembling. Time for higher defcon. #HoldTheLine”

Over in the Senate, Republican Mike Lee of Utah has already pledged to “use every procedural tool at my disposal to impede a debt-ceiling deal that doesn’t contain substantial spending and budgetary reforms.” Such a delay in the upper chamber could increase the risk of default.

Joan E Greve

The House has finished its legislative work for the week, and members are preparing to go home for Memorial Day weekend without a deal reached on raising the debt ceiling.

The House speaker, Republican Kevin McCarthy, told reporters this morning that debt ceiling talks continued well past midnight last night, and negotiators are working around the clock until a deal is reached.

“I thought we made some progress,” McCarthy said. “There’s still some outstanding issues, and I’ve directed our teams to work 24/7.”

The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has warned that the US may default as early as June 1, leaving lawmakers with little time to approve a debt limit increase.

Even if the White House and Kevin McCarthy reach a deal on the debt ceiling, it still has to clear both the House and Senate. As the Guardian’s Joan E Greve reports, many Democrats aren’t happy with what they’re hearing about the GOP’s demands in the high-stakes talks:

Lawmakers exchanged sharp criticism about who was to blame for the protracted standoff over the debt ceiling on Wednesday.

As the country nears its deadline to avoid a federal default, talks between Joe Biden and the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, continued on Wednesday, as negotiators met again to hash out the details of a potential deal. But both parties simultaneously trade pointed remarks, underscoring that an agreement is not yet in reach.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, pushed back against Republicans’ insistence on spending cuts. Jayapal said she spoke Tuesday to White House officials who informed her that Republican negotiators had already rejected $3tn worth of deficit-reduction proposals, such as ending tax subsidies for large oil companies and closing the carried-interest loophole.

Reuters reports that Kevin Hern, the head of the largest Republican caucus in Congress, believes a deal on raising the US government’s debt ceiling is “likely” by tomorrow afternoon.

The GOP has demanded spending cuts in exchange for increasing the US government ability to take on more debt ahead of an estimated 1 June deadline, after which Washington could exhaust its cash on hand and default on its obligations for the first time in history.

House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s deputies have been negotiating with Joe Biden’s representatives for days, and the comments from Hern, who chairs the Republican Study Committee in the House, are one of the best indications yet that the two sides a close to an agreement.

In a statement commemorating the life of Tina Turner, the rock’n’roll legend who died yesterday aged 83, vice-president Kamala Harris called her “a spectacular woman whose life was a testament to all those who believe in what can be, unburdened by what has been.”

Here’s more from her statement:

Her strength, signature voice, and iconic moves inspired millions. An icon, her career was one of the most storied in the history of music. Among countless awards and honors, the ‘Queen of Rock & Roll’ was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame not just once, but twice.
Her life was not free from hardship. Throughout her life, she faced racism, sexism, and domestic violence. As she later put it, experiences that ‘could have shattered me, instead became fuel for my journey, propelling me upward.’ Tina Turner was simply the best. Today, Doug and I pray for her family and loved ones.

Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign is attempting to spin the Twitter launch debacle, pointing reporters to the governor’s interview with Fox News later yesterday evening.

“We had a huge audience. It was the biggest they’ve ever had. It did break the Twitter Space. And so we’re really excited with the enthusiasm,” DeSantis said.

A replay of the event is displayed prominently on DeSantis’s official campaign website, where it’s called “THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT CRASHED THE INTERNET”.

For all the yuks generated by the Ron DeSantis’s botched Twitter Spaces campaign launch, the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports that activist groups in Florida warn there’s nothing funny about the governor’s policies targeting transgender people and other minorities:

Minority groups and others in Florida trampled by Ron DeSantis during his march to a White House run are warning of democracy in peril at a national level.

The rightwing Republican governor’s announcement on Wednesday that he was seeking his party’s 2024 presidential nomination provoked anger and a renewed promise of resistance from transgender rights advocates, immigrant organizations, and civil and voting rights groups in Florida, who have borne the brunt of his extremist policies and legislation.

One prominent Democratic state congresswoman called Florida “the canary in the coalmine” for the wider US as DeSantis prepares to hawk his hard-right brand on the national stage.

For those who missed it, and that was presumably most people, the Guardian’s Dan Milmo has a rundown of what exactly happened when Ron DeSantis tried to launch his presidential campaign on Twitter:

The launch of Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign on Twitter was marred by technical glitches on Wednesday evening.

Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner, has sought to diversify Twitter’s audience, describing himself as a “free speech absolutist” while also reinstating previously banned accounts such as Donald Trump’s. However, he has also cut costs severely, leading to warnings that the platform could become prone to outages more regularly.

Here we answer questions about what happened to the DeSantis launch and why.

Not to be outdone by Joe Biden’s social media team, Donald Trump posted on his Instagram account a parody of DeSantis’s Twitter Spaces campaign launch yesterday – featuring the Florida governor alongside the devil, Adolf Hitler and rightwing conspiracy world fixations George Soros and Klaus Schwab.

It nonetheless manages to be kind of funny:

Say what you will about the botched Twitter Spaces launch of Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, it certainly made for some great zingers. One of the best came from the surprisingly feisty Twitter account of Joe Biden, which seized on the glitches to direct supporters to his fundraising page:

Later that evening, they used the botched launch and DeSantis’s previous statements to produce a video mocking the Florida governor:

DeSantis paid a price for Twitter’s breakdown. According to CNN, there were few actual listeners left when the Spaces event finally got under way:

Good morning, US politics blog readers. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign kickoff descended into farce on Wednesday evening, after the Florida governor opted to make the bid official with an announcement on Twitter’s Spaces audio streaming feature. But there’s a reason White House aspirants usually unveil such things in speeches to cheering crowds, rather than with appearances on social networks known lately for their unreliability: the former are much harder to mess up. And that’s exactly what happened on Twitter, with DeSantis silenced for minutes while the website’s employees could be heard trying to fix whatever was wrong with Spaces, before they restarted the event and many listeners went elsewhere. So we can say his campaign launch didn’t go well, and the Twitter debacle will be fodder for talk shows and rival candidates for weeks, if not months, to come. DeSantis’s ultimate objective nonetheless remains the same: He still needs to close the big gap in Republican voter support between him and Donald Trump if he ever wants to appear on the same ballot as Joe Biden.

Here’s what else is going on today:

• Debt ceiling negotiations are ongoing in between Republicans in the House of Representatives and the White House. The first days of June remain the estimated deadline for a deal to be reached to avoid a catastrophic default. There’s been no breakthrough yet, but we’ll let you know if one is at hand.
• Today is the third anniversary of George Floyd’s death, and Biden has issued a statement asking Americans to “build on the progress we have made thus far and recommit to the work we must continue to do every day to change hearts and minds as well as laws and policies.”
• White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will brief reporters at 1pm eastern time.