WASHINGTON ― In March, House Speaker kevin mccarthyColleagues laughed when the California Republican mocked the president. Joe Bidenof age, saying he would bring Biden “soft food” so they could negotiate on the debt ceiling.
But McCarthy apparently didn’t bring Biden anything to eat during their talks, and the president chewed through the GOP’s debt limit proposal. Republicans don’t laugh anymore.
“Republicans were fooled by a president who can’t find his pants,” Rep. Nancy Mace (RS.C.) he tweeted on tuesdaymaking it clear that he opposed the compromise legislation that came out of the Biden and McCarthy negotiations.
Biden, 80, is the oldest person to serve as US president, and his age and alleged senility have been a constant focus of Republicans and right-wing commentators, despite what his doctors say that he has nothing wrong in his mind. Polls have also shown that voters are concerned about Biden’s age.
During the debt limit showdown, McCarthy repeatedly said that by refusing to negotiate with the Republicans, Biden was “steering” the US toward a potentially catastrophic default. Even some Democrats criticized the president for not engaging publicly as much as McCarthy has done in recent weeks. But as of Wednesday, default seemed unlikely and the broad lines of the deal looked favorable to Democrats.
When asked if Biden has outperformed McCarthy, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) responded: “Yes, I think that’s a fair assumption.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said he believed McCarthy had simply been “cheated.” He did not say by whom.
Even McCarthy admitted that he was impressed with Biden’s negotiating team during the talks, calling them “very professional, very smart” and “very tough at the same time.”
But the speaker has denied he was misled, touting the bill’s cuts to government spending and stricter “work requirements” for federal food benefits opposed by Democrats. The legislation would reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, largely due to cuts in non-defense programs, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“How were we deceived? The largest cut in the history of Congress. The greatest ability to recover money”, McCarthy told ABC News on Tuesday. “We have welfare work requirements where the Democrats said it was a red line.”
Still, Biden scored many victories on the bill, which cuts federal spending far less than republicans initially expected. And in a twist, the CBO said the work requirements will not reduce spending or enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The program supports 20 million households and already limits benefits to unemployed adults without children or disabilities who are between the ages of 18 and 49, unless they work or perform some other qualifying activity for 20 hours a week. Republicans proposed expanding the work requirement to people age 50, as well as restricting the discretion of states to exempt some beneficiaries. The CBO estimated that the Republican proposal would have saved $11 billion and reduced SNAP enrollment by 275,000.
Biden signaled early on that he was open to stricter work requirements for SNAP, but not “nothing of any consequence,” a statement that drew mocking laugh from McCarthy and his colleagues when someone, apparently a lawmaker behind the speaker, yelled, “Loser!”
Sure enough, Biden agreed to expand the SNAP work rules to people up to age 54, but the White House also won changes that make the bill’s net impact inconsequential, at least from a budget perspective. The CBO said that, thanks to the new work requirement waivers for veterans and homeless people, the bill would actually increase SNAP enrollment by a small amount and increase federal spending by $2 billion.
The analysis did not come as a surprise to the White House; A senior administration official said Sunday that “we expect the number of people subject to SNAP work requirements to stay about the same under this arrangement.”
The agreement also preserves key Democratic priorities, such as student loan debt relief, climate change financing and the bulk of investment aimed at ensuring that the wealthy pay their taxes.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) likened the bill to a “shit sandwich” Republicans would have to eat, a sentiment shared by other Republicans who plan to support the bill in a vote on Wednesday.
That’s not to say Democrats don’t have concerns about the legislation. Progressives in particular they are furious that Biden was forced to negotiate on the debt limit, warning that it set a precedent that Republicans will exploit again and again if the debt limit is not abolished.
“It pays off the hostage-taking that Republicans have gotten so good at,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) said Tuesday.
Still, Democrats maintain that the GOP has underestimated Biden throughout, pointing to his many legislative accomplishments in the last Congress, including bipartisan investments in infrastructure and semiconductor research, and his signing of a landmark bill on the climate change.
“If you haven’t already realized that our president is in the top 1% of dealmakers, you haven’t been paying attention in the last two and a half years,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told HuffPost. .
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