The debt ceiling ended up looking like normal politics
If only we could curb some of the drama around it...
After all the drama and hand-wringing about how we could default on the country’s debt, it turned out… fine. Running the timeline down to the wire? Not so great. Getting a compromise bill passed through the House by a pretty massive landslide? That’s how the government is supposed to work.
But even once Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden hashed out the deal, we had to listen to all the carping about what a bad deal it was. Well, yes, if your position is that your side should have gotten exactly what they asked for, it was a bad deal. But hello, we have divided government, so no side is going to get exactly what it wants. Republicans’ more stringent cuts were just as much a pipe dream as Democrats’ hopes of getting a ceiling increase without cuts.
Somewhat coincidentally, as I wrote over at National Journal this week, the bill falls just about where you might expect it to if you tried to figure out what the public wants — you know, the people whom politicians are supposedly representing. I say “coincidentally” because the cynic in me definitely doesn’t think that Biden and McCarthy hashed out a deal with the general public in mind beyond making sure any electoral consequences were minimized (hence lifting the ceiling until early 2025).
Going back to the rhetoric of the past week, I’ve heard and seen quite a few Democrats argue that Republicans held the debt ceiling hostage, and therefore shouldn’t have gotten anything out of the negotiation. I have two problems with that: The first is that Republicans didn’t really get much. I like how The New York Times’s Ezra Klein put it:
Threatening default — and we came within days of it this time — in order to get a deal like this is like threatening to detonate a bomb beneath the bank unless the teller gives you $150 and a commemorative mug. It’s a bizarre mismatch of means and ends.
That said, there are legitimate arguments Democrats are making against some of the provisions of the bill included to appease Republicans, it’s true. But that’s what happens when you have to compromise. And — here’s my second problem with Democrats saying Republicans shouldn’t have gotten anything — Democrats didn’t negotiate from the full range of options available. They cut themselves off by sticking with a clean debt ceiling bill as their “want.”
Let me explain what I mean. Democrats said “we want a clean bill.” House Republicans put a set of conditions on the table by passing a bill of their own — which had zero chance of going anywhere, but it put their cards on the table. Instead of countering with a different set of provisions, Democrats stayed with the clean bill position. Think of a number line. If 0 is in the middle and is a clean debt ceiling bill, and positive numbers are things Republicans might ask for, while negative numbers are things Democrats might ask for, Republicans put their cards down at 50. Democrats, instead of countering at -50, started at 0. (And they didn’t get it done while they held unified government 2021-2022.)
Inevitably, any compromise was going to move in the Republican direction. A clean bill was never going to happen simply because that was where the Democrats put all their cards.
So Democrats did have to move toward Republicans and give them a few small wins. Republicans had to accept much less than they wanted. That’s what a deliberative government is supposed to do. No one is happy, but the final vote count in the House shows that it worked. The Senate will pass it shortly.
I would be completely satisfied with the process if it didn’t also resemble a bunch of college students pulling an all-nighter to write their final paper that they’ve known about all semester — except with pretty dire stakes. Let’s put more effort into the timing problem instead of complaining about having to compromise.