As reported earlier, the fight over the debt ceiling will be the driving force to what gets done or not done in this Congress. Because of the critical financial impact of raising the debt ceiling, something has to get done. This is a big test for new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Here are McCarthy’s challenges as outlined by Punchbowl news:
No. 1: McCarthy wants to pass a debt-limit bill with just one week of lead time. It won’t be easy, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. He’s letting conservatives fill this package up with whatever they want without going through committee markups. Just five Republican no votes will sink any bill, so there’s very little margin for error.
No. 2: What happens if McCarthy passes this bill? Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the White House are publicly insisting on a clean debt limit increase, and they think they can break McCarthy over this. Biden spoke to Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Tuesday and reiterated that none of them will negotiate on the debt limit.
Team McCarthy says they have no intention of ever passing a clean debt-limit increase. But that means that even after struggling to pass this bill, House GOP leaders could easily find they didn’t budge the Senate or White House one inch.No. 3: The risk for McCarthy is that he’s advocating for all of these conservative policies, yet many of them will end up on the cutting room floor. This helps McCarthy with his right wing inside the conference, but potentially it’s a big effort with little real payoff.
No. 4: The calendar is a huge challenge for the speaker and the rest of Washington. It’s April 19. The latest estimates from Goldman Sachs and other analysts is that the U.S. government could reach the default deadline by mid-June. And a discharge petition may be all but useless at this point. There simply isn’t enough time. In fact, the only debt-limit related bill in committee right now repeals the debt limit entirely.
McCarthy holds a pretty bad hand here. The debt limit battlefield isn’t a good one for Republicans. Plus, he’s dealing with a conference that’s unusually interested in picking ideological fights they can’t win. McCarthy is doing what he must internally, but that doesn’t resolve his larger problems.