 [Hot Air] This week, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and President Joe Biden cut a deal to raise the debt limit. The breakthrough came after three months of Biden pledging not to even negotiate over the debt limit. Instead, Biden was forced to concede to a 1% cap on increases for non-military spending, a cutback on IRS funding, a clawback of some unspent COVID-19 allocations, and addition of work requirements for some federal aid.
The compromise deal was indeed far less than House Republicans had demanded, as Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., tweeted, "After factoring in a small cut to discretionary spending over the next 2 yrs, we are still talking about ~$6T more or less in spending bc of large increases in spending elsewhere. ... Govt grew massively over the past 3 years. This growth was supposed to be emergency funding only during COVID. During this time, govt grew 40% or by $2 trillion from 2019 to 2023. We went from spending just over $4T to spending just over $6T."
Every word of that critique is true. Compared to conservative ideals, the compromise bill is indeed a flaming bag of fiscal manure. But conservative ideals weren’t on the table. Biden is the president. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. — thanks in large part to the tender 2020 ministrations of President Donald Trump in the Georgia Senate runoffs and his further interference in the 2022 Senate races in Georgia, Arizona, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — is still the Senate majority leader. This means that Republicans were never going to get a big win on budgetary matters.
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