US political leaders appeared bullish on Monday that they can sell a bipartisan compromise debt ceiling deal to enough mainstream lawmakers – overcoming boisterous criticism from left and right – urgently enough to avert a first-ever national default on the $31.4tn the US owes creditors.
Despite a lot of diplomacy and even arm-twisting still to come on Capitol Hill in the next few days, Joe Biden left the White House to head to Delaware on Monday afternoon smiling and teasing reporters as he took questions, while the first lady, Jill Biden, waited on the lawn.
The US president declared: “There is no reason why it should not be done by the 5th,” referring to Congress passing legislation on the debt ceiling before the US is predicted by the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, to run out of money to pay its bills after 5 June.
But the deal, agreed by the Democratic president and the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, at the weekend after weeks of tense, stop-start negotiations, has left some in Washington questioning if they had received enough concessions.
The 99-page bill needs their support at a crucial vote on Wednesday in the House of Representatives and, later in the week or even into the weekend, in the US Senate to then be signed by Biden and avoid a payments default as soon as next Monday.
“Talk to me,” Biden added, referring to Democratic lawmakers who may be wavering.
The next big step in getting the legislation passed comes on Tuesday afternoon when the House rules committee will meet to discuss the new bill, called the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.
The White House communications director, Ben LaBolt, talking to CNN on Monday, said that if there was a default “economists have predicted it could lead to 8m jobs lost in the US and a national and global recession”.
LaBolt, in an effort to quell criticism from progressive Democrats, noted that those members on the left had previously voted for Biden’s signature pieces of legislation passed on domestic silicon chip production, infrastructure investment and clean energy as part of a climate, healthcare and tax package.
“If you voted for those items, you should vote for this as well, as it’s essential and default would be catastrophic for the American people,” LaBolt said. He added that legislators of both parties were now receiving the text of the debt ceiling bill, which will allow $4tn of extra national liabilities to January 2025, after the next general election.
But on Sunday when Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was asked if the White House should worry about support for the deal by progressives, she told CNN: “Yes, they have to worry.”
Separately, Virginia Democratic senator Tim Kaine said he would take steps to introduce an amendment to cancel a new, 300-mile natural gas pipeline project through West Virginia and Virginia agreed as part of the deal.
Kaine’s office told NBC News that permits for the controversial Mountain Valley pipeline, which is backed by West Virginia’s senators including pivotal Democrat Joe Manchin, were “completely unrelated to the debt ceiling matter”.
Rightwing conservatives also hit out at the overall deal. A “turd sandwich”, the Texas Republican Chip Roy called the deal, while North Carolina’s Dan Bishop tweeted a green vomit emoji.
But on Monday the White House was seen to be encouraging both parties to go along with the deal.
“We hope this is a good, bipartisan compromise,” LaBolt said, adding that he expected the majority of congressional Republican members to support it. “We worked closely to make sure they felt they could win enough support.”
The proposed legislation bill limits non-defense spending, temporarily expands work requirements for some food stamp recipients, and claws back some Covid-19 relief funds. It also cuts $20bn off $80bn in new IRS spending designed to curb tax avoidance.
On Sunday, Biden called the agreement a “really important step forward” and said it took the threat of “catastrophic default off the table”. The agreement, he added. “also represents a compromise – which means no one got everything they want, but that’s the responsibility of governing”.
He also sought to assure progressive Democrats that he had not caved in to Republican pressure during the negotiations. “They’ll find I didn’t,” he said.
Centrist Democrats later signaled they were willing to support the plan. “It’s not a victory, but it’s a lot better [than] what might have happened if there were default,” one Senate Democrat told CNN after an evening briefing.
On the Republican side, McCarthy acknowledged the agreement required concessions from both sides. He faces a crucial test on Tuesday allowing the bill to be approved by a majority of the House.
“It doesn’t get everything everybody wanted,” McCarthy said late on Sunday. “But, in divided government, that’s where we end up. I think it’s a very positive bill.”
But McCarthy’s comments did not prevent him from making some political hay.
“Right now, the Democrats are very upset,” McCarthy told Fox News.
From the sidelines, the Democrat presidential candidate Marianne Williamson called the debt ceiling deal “a negotiation with economic terrorists”.
The deal, she said on Twitter, “protects those who do not need protection – who if anything should be held more accountable – and it inflicts harm on people who are most vulnerable.”
The Florida governor and presidential hopeful, Ron DeSantis, also slammed the deal.
“Prior to this deal, our country was careening towards bankruptcy, and after this deal, our country will still be careening towards bankruptcy, and to say you can do $4tn of increases in the next year and a half, I mean, that’s a massive amount of spending,” DeSantis told Fox News on Monday.
But in comments to Axios, the Florida Democratic congressman Jared Moskowitz described the deal as a “huge win” for Biden, adding both sides “are obviously going to sell it as a win for them. That’s how this works.”
