A new agreement, which should be ratified by Congress, will avert a financial crisis. And it puts President Joe Biden in a position of strength for 2024.
The president promised not to negotiate under threat, but everyone knew he was going to have to make some concessions to the Republican majority in the House of Representatives.
What they didn’t know was that he would get off so lightly. This is yet more proof that in politics, Joe Biden has mastered the “art of the deal” better than his predecessor and adversary, former President Donald Trump.
A Modest Agreement
The agreement that Biden and Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached is nothing groundbreaking. Biden said he didn’t want to concede at all. He conceded a little. McCarthy had enormous and completely unrealistic demands. He conceded a lot more.
Notably, the agreement eliminates spending that wasn’t used on post-pandemic recovery plans and freezes most discretionary spending for two years, while leaving military, health care, and social security spending mostly untouched.
Republicans scored a win by cutting new funds destined for the IRS and tightening welfare eligibility criteria. But they weren’t able to overturn Biden’s student loan amnesty or his eco-friendly green policy. On the other hand, Democrats failed to eliminate the tax loopholes they wanted to close.
Politically, the most significant win for Biden is the two-year extension of the debt ceiling. This provoked the ire of the Trumpists, who openly wanted to hold Biden “hostage” in 2024, cynically predicting that a crisis provoked by a default on payment would be an election guarantee for Trump.
The Theater of Purists
It is clear that by signing the agreement, leaders of both parties in Congress knew they would garner enough votes to counter the opposition of purists on both the right and left, who had already rejected any and all compromise.
Since then, radical right-wing Republicans have staged their condemnation of the deal and vilified McCarthy. For their part, leftist Democrats oppose it because they refuse to endorse cuts to social programs obtained under “threat.”
This opposition suits Republicans who favor the agreement, who will be able to say that if the leftist Democrats dislike the agreement so much, it can’t be all that bad.
Campaign Publicity for Biden
The agreement is a victory for the president, but unlike his Republican rival Trump, Biden is too clever a strategist to boast.
As 2024 approaches, this agreement will only deepen the schism between Republicans who still believe in responsible governance — an endangered species — and far-right populists whose only agenda is to seize and hold onto their power.
Above all, this episode will make those who insist that Biden is incapable of being president eat their words. In the last few weeks, Biden has led this marathon of negotiations in a masterly way, all while embarking on a round trip to Japan. Not bad for a man whose detractors call senile.
Even McCarthy recognized that the president was “very professional, very smart and very tough.” The Republican leader may have inadvertently provided an advertisement for Biden’s campaign.
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