The record will show that I was writing about a likely debt ceiling crisis even before the 2020 election, and that I initially predicted that a deal would be struck that would involve mostly cosmetic cuts to spending. In the end, that is exactly what happened. More recently, however, I changed my position and suggested that Biden would be forced to rely on the Fourteenth Amendment in the face of a united and unreasonable House GOP. What happened, and what does it mean for us going forward?
My later prediction was based on the accurate assumption that a large number of GOP House members would vote against an acceptable deal (I said it would be 50-100; it was 71) and that McCarthy would never put forth a proposal that would substantially divide his caucus and put his gavel in jeopardy. I was wrong on the last point; McCarthy did not negotiate in the manner of a man who is willing to take the nation off the cliff in order to keep his side united and his job completely safe. That in turn means either that he is more public-spirited than I thought, based on his record, or that he believed the GOP would be punished by donors and voters for the chaos that ensued. Either way, it is good news for the vast majority of us who don’t want to burn it down. We can breathe a sigh of relief until November 2024.