Biden Plays Chicken With Default
By The Editorial Board Updated April 27, 2023 6:44 pm ET President Joe Biden Photo: jim watson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images House Republicans on Wednesday passed a bill to raise the federal debt ceiling, but President Biden is still behaving as if it never happened. This means he’s now the Beltway actor toying with default on the national debt. “House Republicans are holding our economy hostage and threatening default,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday. “As the President said yesterday, he’s happy to meet with Speaker McCarthy, but not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended. That is not negotiable.”
President Joe Biden
Photo: jim watson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
House Republicans on Wednesday passed a bill to raise the federal debt ceiling, but President Biden is still behaving as if it never happened. This means he’s now the Beltway actor toying with default on the national debt.
“House Republicans are holding our economy hostage and threatening default,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday. “As the President said yesterday, he’s happy to meet with Speaker McCarthy, but not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended. That is not negotiable.”
Pity the press secretary, whose paycheck depends on pretending to be this obtuse. The House has done its duty to prevent a government default. Now it’s up to the Senate, and Mr. Biden could help by mediating a bipartisan compromise that can get the 60 necessary votes.
Mr. Biden doesn’t seem to have figured out that the House vote changes the balance of negotiating power. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer needs at least nine GOP votes to pass any debt limit increase, and that means he needs help from GOP leader Mitch McConnell. With the House vote in his back pocket, Mr. McConnell isn’t going to provide those votes for free, even if he had the power to do so on his own.
What part of divided government and bicameral legislature doesn’t the President understand? Perhaps he’s still under the illusion that he can refuse to negotiate and cause Republicans to panic as the debt deadline looms. No doubt the press corps will try to give him cover.
But Wall Street will grow increasingly anxious, and even some Democrats have noticed that Nancy Pelosi is now a backbencher. “While I do not agree with everything proposed,” Sen. Joe Manchin said of the House plan, “it remains the only bill moving through Congress that would prevent default and that cannot be ignored.”
Mr. Biden’s refusal even to meet is weird given his long record as a politician willing to talk to the opposition. In 2012 as Vice President, he negotiated a deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” after President Obama’s haughty approach stalled. Mr. Biden reminisces occasionally about his younger years in the Senate, sparring with segregationists like Mississippi Democrat James Eastland. “We’d debate like hell on the floor of the Senate,” Mr. Biden said last year, “and go and have lunch together.”
Yet Mr. Biden won’t meet with Mr. McCarthy to hash out a debt deal? Ms. Jean-Pierre said Thursday that Mr. McCarthy’s plan is “an extreme MAGA wish list,” and Republicans are “saying to the Senate, they’re saying to the President, that we have to go with this agenda in its full form.”
No, they’re simply saying that the House has passed a bill to lift the debt limit, and Mr. McCarthy would like to negotiate a final deal with Mr. Biden that can get through both chambers and signed into law. If Mr. Biden won’t work with Republicans in the House and Senate on a compromise, then he’ll be responsible for the financial calamity he’s been warning about.
Wonder Land: A beside-the-point president is the best thing that has ever happened to the progressive centralization project. But its success in 2024 depends on whether Republicans back Trump or not. Images: Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock/AP/Zuma Press Composite: Mark Kelly The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition
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