Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s backers credit him for pulling a rabbit out of his hat to head off a debt ceiling impasse that could have crippled the U.S. economy, while still achieving some modest GOP policy wins.
But the fallout from the late May deal that McCarthy, R-Calif., cut with President Joe Biden is coming back to haunt him now as his party struggles to keep the government functioning beyond the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
Unless McCarthy can pull off a “2.0 of what he did on the debt ceiling,” the government may be headed for a shutdown, a former close colleague says.
