Officially, the American people were the winners of a debt ceiling deal to avoid a default.
But when Shalanda Young, the White House’s top negotiator, discussed the terms of the deal on Tuesday, it sounded more like she thought the Biden administration came out on top.
She began joking and later confirmed that the administration was willing to override one of the Republicans’ key clauses.
And then she took a long pause when a reporter asked her if the president was moving forward.
“The American people came first,” she said in the White House briefing room.
“If you go into these things, what are you doing it for?
Shalanda Young (right), the White House’s top negotiator, shared jokes with the White House press on Tuesday, much to the delight of Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
Conservative House Republicans have issued a range of criticism over the deal Biden and McCarthy struck this weekend
‘Certainly. There are days when I have to slap myself and you think, oh well, let it go. It is well. It’s about avoiding default, not hurting American people in the process by making draconian changes… as we saw in the Republican bill on Medicaid, which we didn’t care about.
So protect the things that would have hurt hard-working Americans. Come up with reasonable spending levels, which I think most Americans will, when they hear a spending freeze that is reasonable, and doing our basic constitutional duty of Congress, which is to avoid defaults.
So this isn’t about Republicans or Democrats. If you go into who won and who didn’t, you’ve already lost.’
Some Republicans wanted deep cuts. A bill passed by the House in April would have reduced spending to 2022 levels and capped increases by one percent for the next decade.
At the same time, Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy is meeting resistance to persuade hardline members of his party to support the deal.
Republican defectors estimate it would add $4 trillion to the national debt, even though it includes $136 billion in spending cuts.
As a result, he may be voted to remove him from office.
Representative Dan Bishop was the first to publicly raise the idea of firing the speaker on Tuesday. .
“What basis is there for trust?” Bishop said at a press conference held by the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, raising his hand to say he would “put the motion to evict the speaker on the table.”
“There are 222 members of the Republican conference. No one in the Republican conference could have done worse during the negotiations than McCarthy, he added.
For his part, the speaker of the House continues to portray the deal as a victory for the Republicans.
McCarthy told reporters he is not concerned about a motion to leave. ‘Say it again. What did the Democrats put in it?” he said.
The deal was announced on Sunday. Lawmakers should rush to pass it into law before June 5, predicted as the day the federal government could run out of money and fail to pay its credit bills.
Freedom Caucus members chimed in at a press conference on the debt ceiling agreement between McCarthy and Biden on Wednesday, as a protester stood behind them
Hardliners have launched the idea of removing McCarthy from the speaker’s position
The House is expected to vote on Wednesday, while the Senate has even more time to swallow before landing on Biden’s desk.
The list of likely no votes in the House stands at 22.
Young, White House budget director, urged Congress to pass the bill.
“I want to be clear: This deal is a compromise, which means no one gets everything they want and there are tough choices to be made,” Young told reporters.
She was Biden’s chief negotiator. And arrived in the briefing room in a jubilant mood, joking about the intensity and length of the conversations.
“I’ll see my child again,” she said with a smile. “I have a little confession to make. I don’t have clean clothes anymore either.’
Speaker Kevin McCarthy unveiled 99-page bill raising debt ceiling to prevent US from defaulting
She then described being spotted in the morning by reporters rushing to get clean clothes.
“I didn’t have time to do laundry or take anything to the dry cleaners,” she said. “So that’s pretty much what my last two weeks have been like.”
She added that the deal would protect the government’s legislative performance.
And she signaled that the administration was willing to use an exemption to nullify one of the Republicans’ most important victories.
They provided a budgeting mechanism known as “PAYGO” – short for pay-as-you-go – that requires new spending to be matched by savings, but it comes with an override.
“We will follow the processes set out in the law on PAYGO,” Young said. “And if that distance is deemed necessary to ensure that President Biden’s agenda is taken care of … then we’re going to use it.”