Robert Reich: The Deal — Can McCarthy And Biden Get The Count – OpEd

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Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden reached a deal Sunday night to raise the debt ceiling and prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations. ‘

Is it a good deal? Who will bear the burden? Should it have ever gotten to this point? Did Biden blow it? 

None of these questions is relevant right now. The only relevant question is whether McCarthy and Biden, along with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, can cobble together a majority to pass it before June 5, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the U.S. will run out of funds to pay its bills.

I believe they can, because they must. There’s no time further negotiations, and neither side would give anything else away. The deal is done. 

But the MAGA right crazies in the House — anywhere from 28 to 123 by my measure — may not go along, especially if Donald Trump says it’s a bad deal. Which means additional House Democrats will have to agree. 

Will they? Here’s where the asymmetry between House Republicans who don’t believe in government and House Democrats who do comes into play. 

Progressive Democrats will object to the freeze on certain domestic discretionary spending programs and additional work requirements on the recipients of food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, as unfair and unnecessary. But most will go along with the deal because they believe in government, and they don’t want America to default — with potentially cataclysmic consequences. 

Many in the MAGA crowd, on the other hand, will see this vote as an opportunity to show their supporters that they’re willing to blow up the system, because they were voted in on their promise to blow up the system. 

So my advice to you is not to get drawn into irrelevant discussions about whether this deal is good or bad. It’s the only deal. The alternative is chaos. Republicans have succeeded in holding the nation hostage, and now we have to pay the ransom that’s been negotiated. 

What happens from here on depends on how many members of the House prefer governing to chaos.

Robert Reich

Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and writes at robertreich.substack.com. Reich served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.

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