The NPR Politics Podcast - McCarthy Debuts Spending Cuts — But May Lack Votes To Pass Them

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he would agree to raise federal government's borrowing limit in exchange for cuts to discretionary, non-defense spending and other changes to federal safety net programs — though he likely does not have enough support from his own party to actually pass the plan through his chamber.The U.S. must raise its borrowing limit by early summer in order to avoid destabilizing the global economic system.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political correspondent Susan Davis, and congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It is edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org Hi, this is Miles. And Annalise. And we're in Encinitas, California, representing Village A Middle School.

We just came back from our trip to Washington, D.C. where our teacher's friend Dee Walsh showed us the U.S. Capitol and the press room. This podcast was recorded at 1.09 p.m. on April 19, 2023. Things might have changed by the time you hear it, but we'll never forget our trip to D.C. Please enjoy the show. Here we go. That was good.C. Please enjoy the show. Here we go. That was good. Yeah.

They are so sweet. Wait, Deirdre, was that you? Were you the tour guide? I was. I was. My friend Kathy brought her to school from Encinitas, California, and I got to meet them and they were a great group. You know what?

I remember going to D.C. as a middle schooler, so I think they're right. They will never forget that trip. Absolutely. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And about 100 days ago, we were covering California Republican Kevin McCarthy's tough fight to become Speaker of the House. You might remember the hours of intrigue, the 15 votes, and the ultimate narrow four-vote majority. So 100 days later, a check-in. Deirdre, with that narrow grasp on power and a lot of demand from Republicans who got him there, what has Speaker McCarthy focused on? What have

they gotten done? I mean, I think the Speaker is focused on trying to keep that narrow majority together. I mean, I lived through that five days of 15 votes, and it was tough to keep the divided House Republican conference together. He agreed to a lot of demands, and he's delivered on some of the promises that he made during that week and also made in the lead up to taking back control of the House in the 2022 midterms. Things like reopening the House of Representatives to visitors after the pandemic, allowing amendment votes on the floor, so-called regular order, so more of his members could debate legislation. The House Republicans pushed to repeal the COVID emergency that President Biden ultimately signed. Republicans blocked a D.C. crime bill the president initially was going to veto but ended up signing. And, you know, and they've launched all kinds of investigations. So I think in terms of like big bipartisan bills, that hasn't happened. And, you know, we can talk more about the major challenge ahead for the speaker on the

debt ceiling. You know, I think we have to have a sort of level expectation here, too. I mean, the Republican majority hasn't necessarily done a lot or gotten a lot signed into law, but it's also a reflection of divided government. I think we've seen this dynamic play out a lot over the past decade or longer. So it's not unusual to me that they don't have a very long list of bills that Joe Biden has signed into law yet. But I do think the most consequential questions for this majority are still to come. Namely, there's a very consequential fiscal negotiation going on now between Congress and the White House over raising the debt limit and what federal spending should look like. And also Republicans, I think, for their own party

politics, have a lot on the line on issues like immigration. You know, a lot of them believe that they won the majority on the issues of the economy and immigration and that they want to be able to show some deliverables going into 2024, especially not just for the broader country. But those are two issues that are really important to the Republican base, and they need to be able to put up some wins. And they're very divided on immigration. I mean, I will say that they promised to pass a major immigration bill in the first week that they had the majority, and they had to shelve it, and they're trying to mark it up through committee this week. But at this point, they don't have the votes just among House Republicans to pass an immigration bill. Yeah, I was going to ask, Sue, you talk about divided government, but is it also a divided conference, a divided caucus of Republicans

in the House? Yeah, I mean, and this is sort of the central tension for Speaker McCarthy, because he's speaker, but it's a very tenuous grasp on power, right? Like he had to cut so many side deals, he had to make so many people happy. Now, I have talked to Republican lawmakers, and this might just be some self-assurance on their part, but I've heard lawmakers say that they see that what happened in the Speaker's fight is actually a good thing, in that the party was able to get out a lot of their frustrations and fighting and do it in public, and that there has been some element of unity within the conference since that point in January. But again, McCarthy hasn't really brought to the floor yet anything that really tests the unity of that conference. And almost nothing will test Republican unity more than something like trying to pass a budget, what they think the vision of the government should look like, what it will take to raise the debt limit. You know, there's a lot of Republican lawmakers who don't want to vote for anything that would raise the debt limit. So in terms of his leadership,

I don't think it's been put to the screws yet on an actual substantive issue, whether he can do it, whether he can survive it as Speaker, because remember, one of those dynamics in order to become Speaker was he had to agree to change the rules to make it easier to throw him out as speaker. Whether he can navigate that path, get some wins and remain the leader of this party is like the big ongoing drama of this Congress that I think we're going to keep talking about through the election. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll have more on that in a moment. And we're back. And I wanted to start with the debt ceiling, which I readily admit is no one's favorite topic, except maybe ours. I enjoy it. Yeah, okay. We kind of like it, but we're nerds like that. But very soon, it will be ruling our lives and our attention.

It's this cliff that the US is expected to get to sometime between now and maybe the end of summer, maybe fall. And unless Congress acts, the federal government won't have the authority to pay its bills. That is, it won't be able to pay the debts that have already been incurred. If this were to happen, it could be disastrous. The world could go into a financial tailspin because the full faith and credit of the United States is something that the global financial system counts on. So President Biden and Speaker McCarthy are the key players here, and they are not talking to each other. Well, McCarthy has really picked this fight. You know, this isn't a two-way agreement that this is something that needs to be debated. The White House's position has been and continues to be,

we're not going to negotiate over the debt limit, just raise it, and then we can have a conversation about any kind of budget or fiscal arguments you want to have. But, you know, one of the agreements that McCarthy made to become speaker is that he was going to fight for spending cuts, that he was going to fight for more fiscal sanity. We should note, as we have in the past, Republicans are always much more eager to find fiscal sanity when there's a Democrat in the White House. So McCarthy's putting a lot of stock in having some kind of win in this negotiation. And so much is at stake because, as you well noted, Tam, like a risk of a default could have major, major economic consequences around the globe. And I think McCarthy's pressure right now is to try to put together a negotiating position that he can reasonably get 218 Republicans to back. And I'm sure Deirdre has more insights on this, but I don't know what that is yet. Well, I mean, I think the other challenge for McCarthy is he remembers the negotiations back in 2010, 2011 about this issue, but the vast majority of House Republicans were not serving in Congress at the time, and they've never had to vote on the debt ceiling. And a lot of them

just don't want to lift the debt ceiling. They want to say that they are having this push against any additional federal spending, despite the fact that the debt ceiling is for previous bills that both Republicans and Democrats have run up over decades. So right now, McCarthy's sort of playing his own personal House Republican politics. Without a negotiation with the president going on, he's moving ahead on his own. He went to the New York Stock Exchange on Monday and outlined a proposal that would lift the debt ceiling sometime into next year that would roll back spending levels to basically what they were two years ago and attach some policy provisions that House Republicans want to get through. Things like adding work requirements for adults without dependents who are getting food stamps. They want to attach energy provisions that would help speed permitting of new energy projects. So he's sort of loading up this bill, trying to get 218 votes. It's unclear he has them now. We expect to vote next week.

But I think the game plan beyond the House vote is really unclear because McCarthy's hoping he can show that the House Republicans have a position, have details on what they want to do. But like Sue said, the president and congressional Democrats have really stuck together with this message that we should just lift the debt ceiling and not have these other demands. Yeah, President Biden was asked about Kevin McCarthy giving this speech at the New York Stock Exchange. He was asked about it over the weekend, sort of before the speech happened. We were standing out on a tarmac in the middle of the night. And President Biden was very much on message. Of course, I'll speak. Show me his

budget. That old expression, show me your budget. You know, we agreed early on, I'd lay down a budget, which I did on March 9th, and he laid down a budget. I don't know what we're negotiating, but I don't know what they want. You know, and I think a really important dynamic here is not just between, you know, resistance from the White House and Kevin McCarthy, but the sort of quiet or potential for divides between House and Senate Republicans. Again, this debt ceiling fight was picked by the speaker. It is not wholeheartedly shared by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell, who in the past has said we are not a party that defaults. He does not want to be seen as a leader of a party that could be driving the U.S. economy into turbulence. He is looking at 2024 as a year in

which he has a very good chance at winning a Senate majority. And these are really tricky politics. And things like, as Deirdre mentioned, proposals to do things like cut food assistance, frankly, just doesn't really have the same level of support among Senate Republicans who have more of a macro view of this for people in their state. So I think that in some ways weakens McCarthy's hand because it's not like House and Senate Republicans, the party itself is even in lockstep against the White House. It's sort of a triple negotiation between House and Senate Republicans, like what can the Senate actually get behind that McCarthy can negotiate? And what will President Biden sign? And it is, there is no clarity here on how this shakes out. And I think

it's why we're going to talk about it a lot, because as we sit here today, the possibility of a default remains real. It is not just an academic argument. I think that there are people that are very concerned without some progress in this negotiation that we could be back at those sort of very dangerous brink politics. Well, and I think that another dynamic, you say that Kevin McCarthy has been through this before and his members haven't. Well, someone McCarthy has been through this before and his members haven't. Well, someone else who went through this was President Biden when he was vice president and was very involved in the negotiations, along with Mitch McConnell, who's still the Republican leader. They cut the deal for the last fiscal cliff. The two of them were the key negotiators in the end

that sort of headed off from the brink when President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid couldn't get them there. So they know how to do it. And I think that it is the best model for a path forward if other avenues don't yield any kind of results. I mean, I think McConnell is giving McCarthy some room right now and has basically said this is a discussion between the president and the speaker. But I think the X factor is we don't know if the House Republicans can even pass their own bill. And when we find that out, I think the focus will go back to McConnell and be like, is there someone else who can help bridge that divide? I also think because Biden negotiated something in divided government with Republicans in control of the House before, a clean debt limit is not likely. And I think that the White House continuing to put this pressure saying, that's it, that's it, that's it. At some level, someone is going to have to break down and say, okay, what can we do? And I'm going to say this a million times, and I feel it's important to say this every time we talk about the debt ceiling, to understand the scope of the debt and what's real.

But the argument, the policy argument right now is really just focused on non-defense discretionary spending in the federal budget. And that is a drop in the bucket to what drives the debt in this country. So I feel like there's a part of me that it's important to understand that it's a little bit of a disingenuous policy argument because the negotiators are talking about a rounding error in what is ultimately the bigger picture of the debt and the deficit in the United States. And I think that might come into a clearer view if we get closer and closer to an actual default scenario.

Right. Well, we are going to leave it there for today. But we will talk about this again and again and again. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.