WASHINGTON — When Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., meets President Joe Biden on Wednesday to discuss the debt limit, there are some structural advantages in favor of emerging from the fight this summer without tanking financial markets that didn’t exist in 2011, a similar moment in U.S. political history.
The talks are starting with plenty of time to reach agreement before the Treasury Department’s supply of cash and accounting maneuvers runs out, possibly in June. When House Republicans and then-Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, took control in early 2011, they spent months battling the Obama administration and Democratic leaders over unfinished fiscal 2011 spending bills before even turning to the debt ceiling.
That debate over stopgap bills to avoid a partial government shutdown was occurring even as the Obama Treasury Department was warning of a debt limit breach by mid-May, in which bondholders and every beneficiary of government spending were at risk of missed payments.
