McConnell could be key to Biden strategy of splitting GOP on debt ceiling
by W. James Antle III, Politics Editor |
March 31, 2023 07:03 AM
Divide and conquer may be the White House’s new strategy for dealing with congressional Republicans on the debt ceiling.
President Joe Biden insists that he won’t negotiate on extending the federal government’s borrowing limit and that House Republicans need to present their own budget blueprint before they can have any wider conversation about spending cuts.
But Biden’s team has certainly exploited the vacuum left by the delay in the House GOP budget proposal, filling it with the spending cuts outlined by the Freedom Caucus, a conservative faction of lawmakers.
Not only does this help generate negative publicity for what Republicans are trying to accomplish, but it also may serve to divide congressional Republicans, some of whom don’t want to be seen as going as far as the Freedom Caucus when it comes to federal spending levels.
Other Republicans have disagreements about what kind of cuts should be on the table in the first place. Some say that defense spending and the major entitlement programs, especially Social Security and Medicare, should be off-limits. Others contend this exempts too much federal spending to be a serious approach to getting the nation’s fiscal house in order.
The White House already tried a version of what it is doing with the Freedom Caucus ahead of the midterm elections when it got many Republicans to distance themselves from a plan to sunset federal legislation offered by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), who was then chairing the Senate GOP’s campaign arm.
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