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      Debt ceiling bill clears first House hurdle as 5 June deadline inches closer – live

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      From 3h agoThe House of Representatives has started its debate ahead of the chamber’s final vote on the debt ceiling bill.We will be bringing you all the latest details.Transport secretary Pete Buttigieg has weighed in on the debate surrounding the debt ceiling deal, saying that “no one’s going to get everything they want when you have a negotiation like this.”During an interview with NBC host Chuck Todd on Meet The Press, Todd asked Buttigieg what responsibility he believes Democrats have to pass the bill for president Joe Biden.Buttigieg replied:
      “Obviously, we all would have loved to see a clean bill that separated the budget conversation from the default conversation but also we’re in a moment of divided government where no one side, no one party is going to get everything that they want…
      No one’s going to get everything they want when you have a negotiation like this, but this is one that we believe in that we think is the right way forward that also allows us to move on to the next conversation, putting the terrible and unacceptable specter default behind us.”
      When asked whether Congress and the Biden administration are “mainstreaming” using debt ceiling as a budget negotiation tool, Buttigieg replied:
      “Obviously, we didn’t ask for this situation that some of the more extreme voices in the House GOP put this country into … most reasonable people could agree, the best way to handle the budget negotiations is through the regular order process that the law and the Constitution set out.”
      Donald Trump has promised to strip away birthright US citizenship if he gets elected into office again.In a video posted onto social media yesterday, Trump said if he becomes president, he will sign an executive order that will make sure children of undocumented migrants “will not receive automatic US citizenship.”He added that his order “will “choke off a major incentive for continued illegal immigration, deter more migrants from coming and encourage many of the aliens Joe Biden has unlawfully let into our country to go.”Trump’s reiteration of birthright removal comes 125 years after the supreme court settled the issue.During his first presidential run he condemned the right by inaccurately saying, “We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States … with all of those benefits. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end,” as over 30 countries currently offer birthright citizenship.Martin Pengelly has more:The House is now in recess subject to the call of the chair.The House will reconvene again at 7:15pm for one hour of debate that will be evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats before voting on the bill.The special counsel investigating former president Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results is looking into Trump’s firing of a cybersecurity official whose office called the election “the most secure in American history,” according to the New York Times.Reuters reports:The US special counsel investigating Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat is examining his firing of a cybersecurity official whose office said the vote was secure, the New York Times said.Jack Smith, who is also investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents, has subpoenaed former Trump White House staffers as well as Christopher Krebs, who oversaw the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) under Trump, the Times said, citing unnamed sources.Trump fired Krebs in November 2020, days after Cisa issued a statement calling the 3 November election “the most secure in American history”, as the then-president made his unsupported accusations that the vote was rigged.Cisa, part of the Department of Homeland Security, works to protect US elections. Krebs told associates at the time he expected to be fired.Representatives for Smith declined to comment on the Times report. Representatives for Krebs and Trump could not be reached for comment.For more, click here:The debt ceiling bill has passed the first procedural hurdle in the House, with 52 Democrats bailing out the Republican lawmakers.In addition to 52 Democrats voting yes for the rule governing debate in the chamber, 189 Republicans voted yes. Voting no were 158 Democrats and 29 Republicans.One more hour of debate is left before the final voting round commences later tonight.Donald Trump was captured on tape acknowledging that he kept a classified Pentagon document regarding a potential attack on Iran, CNN reports.According to report, federal prosecutors obtained the recording which was made during a meeting in summer 2021 at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.Sources familiar with the matter told CNN that Trump made comments that suggested that he would like to share the information but that he was aware of his post-presidency limitations surrounding classified records.The report also cited sources saying that the meeting attendees did not have security clearance. Attendees included two people working on the autobiography of Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, in addition to former Trump aides including communications specialist Margo Martin.According to sources, the recording is an “important” piece of evidence in a potential case against Trump over his handling over classified documents following his presidency.Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell echoed similar sentiments alongside Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, saying that he will support the debt ceiling bill once it reaches the Senate chamber.“House Republicans’ unity gave them the upper hand, they used it to secure a much needed step in the right direction. When this agreement reaches the Senate, I’ll be proud to support it without delay,” said McConnell.Texas governor Greg Abbott has declared John Scott as the state’s temporary attorney general following the state House’s vote to impeach Republican attorney general Ken Paxton.The decision to impeach Paxton comes as a result of years of allegations including corruption, bribery, unfitness for office and abuse of public trust.According to the Texas Tribune, investigators testified at the state House general investigating committee, saying that they believed Paxton wrongly used official funds and abused his authority to assist a friend and financial backer.In response to the impeachment, Paxton said it was an attempt to “overthrow the will of the people and disenfranchise the voters of our state” and that the charges are based on “hearsay and gossip, parroting long-disproven claims,” the Associated Press reports.Meanwhile, Abbott, who has largely been silent during the whole ordeal, said in a statement, “John Scott has the background and experience needed to step in as a short-term interim Attorney General during the time the Attorney General has been suspended from duty,” the Associated Press added.New York Republican representative Marcus Molinaro hailed the tentative bill, calling it “an agreement [that] will move this nation forward.”
      “The Fiscal Responsibility Act takes important action, not at all to punish our most vulnerable. In fact, it takes real steps to ensure those most vulnerable among us are protected and served and have access to the support that they deserve, and by the way, find their way to work.
      This bill hold states like New York and others accountable for waving restrictions, expanding access, not to help the most vulnerable, but to bloat and to grow and to increase state government. Because of action states have taken, the most vulnerable are left to fend for themselves…
      States like New York increased their infrastructure, their government and leveraged federal taxpayer dollars, not to benefit those who need the help the most but to benefit state government. And this bill starts a very important step of holding states accountable…
      We have an opportunity here to make a measurable difference in the lives of those who struggle the most. And this is an effort to ensure that that happens.”
      Texas Republican representative Chip Roy lashed out against Democrats over the tentative bill during the House debate, saying:
      “I don’t wanna hear a whole hell of a lot about what we’re doing to devastate American families with rampant inflation, because we keep spending money we don’t have.
      To my colleagues on this side of the aisle, my beef isn’t that I don’t understand the struggle with the negotiators against that kind of reasoning. My beef is that you cut a deal that shouldn’t have been cut…”
      The House of Representatives has started its debate ahead of the chamber’s final vote on the debt ceiling bill.We will be bringing you all the latest details. More

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she will vote against US debt ceiling deal

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      The New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she would vote against the debt limit deal on Wednesday night, as the 5 June deadline looms.On Tuesday, the Hill said the office of one of the most high-profile progressives in the US House confirmed she would not support the controversial agreement to raise the debt ceiling, which was agreed by Republicans under the speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and the Biden White House.Ocasio-Cortez, widely known as AOC, had previously signaled that she would not support the deal.“My red line has already been surpassed,” Ocasio-Cortez said last week. “I mean, where do we start? [No] clean debt ceiling. Work requirements. Cuts to programs. I would never – I would never – vote for that.”Several far-right Republicans have also opposed the deal, saying it does not go far enough to cut spending.Support from Democrats will probably be needed for the bill to pass the House on Wednesday night. But progressive support is split, as some lawmakers raise concerns about work requirements added to welfare programs.“Some number of progressives, including myself, lean no,” Greg Casar, the Progressive caucus whip and a Democrat from Texas, told Axios.The progressive caucus chair, Pramila Jayapal of Washington, said on a Tuesday press call the bill contained measures progressives were “seriously concerned about”.“There will be real harmful impacts for poor people and working people,” Jayapal said, noting that several members had “serious concerns about the environmental justice implications of this bill”.Other progressives emphasized the need to avoid a default.“You have to deal with reality in politics,” the Tennessee representative Steve Cohen, a progressive caucus member, told Axios, adding that concerns about the bill’s contents are “totally secondary to keeping the world’s economy … on track”.The compromise announced on Sunday would suspend debt-limit negotiations through 1 January 2025 and raise the US debt limit from $31.4tn.The deal includes changes to federal assistance programs, including new work requirements for food stamps access. Unspent Covid-19 aid will be returned to the government.Several Democrats have criticized Biden for negotiating with Republicans under threat of a default. More

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      US debt ceiling: Republican hard-right vows to ‘do everything in our power’ to oppose bill

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      Members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus have attacked the proposed spending cuts in the debt ceiling bill as woefully inadequate, and vowed to oppose the legislation when it hits the floor.“We had the time to act, and this deal fails – fails completely,” Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, chair of the Freedom Caucus, said on Tuesday. “We will do everything in our power to stop it and end it now.”The House is expected to hold a final vote on the bill on Wednesday, while other members of the Freedom Caucus continue to denounce the compromise brokered by the Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, and President Joe Biden over the weekend.The compromise bill, formally named the Fiscal Responsibility Act, would suspend the debt ceiling until 2025, allowing the US to avoid a default that could reap devastating consequences on the American economy. The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has warned that the federal government will be unable to pay its bills starting on 5 June unless Congress takes action.In addition to the debt ceiling suspension, the bill includes government spending cuts and expanded work requirements demanded by McCarthy.“There has been a lot of hard work and a lot of late nights that have gone into changing the spending trajectory in this town,” Steve Scalise, the House majority leader, told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday night. “For once in a long, long time, Washington is actually going to spend less money next year than it is this year, and that’s a reform that all of us can support.”Republicans on the House rules committee voted late on Tuesday to advance the bill, clearing the way for a final vote on Wednesday.During that hearing, two Freedom Caucus members who sit on the panel, Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina, attempted to block the legislation from advancing, but they were outnumbered by their colleagues. The final vote in the rules committee was 7-6 to advance the bill, with four Democrats joining Roy and Norman in opposing the measure.“The Republican conference right now has been torn asunder,” Roy said ahead of the hearing. “Not one Republican should vote for this deal. It is a bad deal.”But the Republican chair of the rules committee, Tom Cole of Oklahoma, defended the bill as the party’s best possible option with Democrats in control of the White House and the Senate.“Today’s bill is a product of compromise that reflects the realities of a divided government,” Cole said at the hearing. “In a true negotiation, you always get less than you want and give up more than you’d like.”Despite reassurances from McCarthy and his allies, it remains unclear how many House Republicans will support the proposal. In addition to the Freedom Caucus, some of the more centrist members of the House Republican conference like representatives Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Wesley Hunt of Texas said they would vote against the bill.Dan Bishop of North Carolina, a member of the Freedom Caucus, predicted that most of the House Republican conference would oppose the legislation, forcing McCarthy to rely on Democrats to pass the bill.“This is a career-defining vote for every Republican,” Bishop said Tuesday. “This bill, if it passes, must pass with less than half of the Republican conference.”The House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, underscored the reality that Republicans must provide most of the 218 votes needed to get the bill approved.“This is an agreement that, at their insistence, they negotiated with the administration,” Jeffries said. “It’s our full and complete expectation that they are going to produce at least 150 votes.”Some House Democrats also appeared conflicted over the compromise measure on Tuesday, bemoaning the proposed spending cuts while emphasizing the crucial need to increase the government’s borrowing limit before 5 June.“There are some pros to the bill. The chief one is that it raises the debt limit to 2025 and ensures that we avoid a Republican-led catastrophic default,” Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on Tuesday.“I don’t want to minimize the challenges with the bill. There will be real harmful impacts for poor people and working people,” she added.Jayapal said her team was in the process of conducting a whip count to assess where progressive members stand on the debt ceiling bill, but it appears certain that the legislation will win bipartisan support in the House, as the center-left New Democrat Coalition has endorsed the proposal.If the bill passes the House, it will move on to the Senate, where lawmakers will have only a few days to approve the proposal before the 5 June default deadline. Even if McCarthy’s compromise can become law, the speaker’s troubles may be just beginning.Members of the Freedom Caucus, some of whom initially resisted McCarthy’s speakership bid in January, toyed with the idea of ousting him depending on the outcome of Wednesday’s vote.Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida told Newsmax on Tuesday, “If a majority of Republicans are against a piece of legislation, and you use Democrats to pass it, that would immediately be a black-letter violation of the deal we had with McCarthy to allow his ascent to the speakership, and it would likely trigger an immediate motion to vacate.” More

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      McCarthy insists Republican support for debt deal ‘easy’ despite vocal opposition

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      The Republican speaker of the US House, Kevin McCarthy, insisted on Tuesday that supporting the debt ceiling deal would be “easy” for his party and it was likely to pass through Congress despite one prominent rightwinger’s verdict that the proposed agreement is a “turd sandwich”.Amid loud denunciations from the Republican right and also from closer to the centre, McCarthy said he was not worried the agreement would fail, or that it would threaten his hold on the speaker’s gavel.The bill is the “most conservative deal we’ve ever had”, McCarthy told reporters, of a two-year agreement that includes spending freezes and rescinding Internal Revenue Service funding while leaving military and veterans spending untouched.Negotiators fielded by McCarthy and Joe Biden reached the deal to raise the $31.4tn US debt ceiling last weekend.A default would be likely to have catastrophic consequences for the US and world economies. The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has said that will happen on 5 June if no bill is passed.But members of the far-right the House Freedom Caucus have balked at the deal.Chip Roy of Texas, who in January played a key role in securing the speakership for McCarthy after 15 rounds of voting, amid a rightwing rebellion, had perhaps the most pungent response.He said the debt ceiling deal was a “turd sandwich”, because it did not include spending cuts demanded by the hard right.Speaking to reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday, Roy said he had not changed his mind.“Right now, it ain’t good,” he said.Another rightwing firebrand, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said he “anticipate[d] voting for” the bill, having said: “I think it’s important to keep in mind the debt limit bill itself does not spend money.”But a comparative moderate, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, resorted to personal abuse of Biden when she said on Twitter: “Washington is broken. Republicans got outsmarted by a president who can’t find his pants. I’m voting no on the debt ceiling debacle because playing the DC game isn’t worth selling out our kids and grandkids.”Republicans regularly claim without evidence that Biden, 80, is too old and mentally unfit to be president. Conversely, many political observers have credited Biden and his White House negotiators with pulling off a deal to avoid default while keeping Democrats on the front foot.Saluting Biden’s “capacity to over-perform after an onslaught of negative press and Democratic hand-wringing”, the Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin said: “Biden brushed back the litany of outrageous demands, kept his spending agenda and tax increases intact and got his two-year debt limit increase.“And in making a deal with [McCarthy] Biden helps stoke dissension on the GOP side as the extreme Maga wing denounces the agreement.”Biden has also faced criticism from progressives and from environmental activists, in the latter case over the inclusion in the deal of approval for a controversial pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia.“Singling out the Mountain Valley pipeline for approval in a vote about our nation’s credit limit is an egregious act,” said Peter Anderson of Appalachian Voices, which has charted hundreds of environmental violations by the project.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionRepublicans control the House by 222-213. By Tuesday afternoon, more than 20 Republicans had said they would vote against the deal. Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has said the party should let default happen if Biden does not cave.If defections proliferate, McCarthy could be left needing Democratic support to pass the bill arising from the deal and thereby avoid default.On Tuesday, the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said his party would do their part to win passage of the bill.“My expectation is House Republicans will keep their commitment to produce at least two-thirds of their conference which is approximately 150 votes” and pass the bill, Jeffries said. “Democrats are committed to making sure we do our part in avoiding default.”Jeffries said he did not think there would be a problem advancing the bill through the rules committee. That panel was due to consider the 99-page bill beginning at 3pm ET on Tuesday, ahead of votes in the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-held Senate.Democrats control the Senate 51-49. Some Senate Republicans have voiced dissatisfaction with the deal.On Tuesday, one of Biden’s negotiators, the budget director, Shalanda Young, said the White House “strongly urged” Congress to pass the bill. Wally Adeyemo, the deputy treasury secretary, told MSNBC the deal was a “good faith compromise” that took a debt default off the table.A White House spokesperson said Biden was having conversations with both progressive and moderate Democrats ahead of a House vote planned for Wednesday.Markets have reacted positively to the deal so far.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      US debt ceiling deal: what has to happen now to get it passed?

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      The United States has days before it runs out of time to pay its bills and avoid a first-ever national default. Washington lawmakers are scrambling to push through a deal that would temporarily suspend the US debt limit, averting a potential disaster for the domestic and global economy.The debt ceiling, which caps the amount of debt the US can hold, currently sits at $31.4tn. The US hit that limit in January. Since then, the treasury has taken “extraordinary measures” to prevent default.Last week, the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, warned lawmakers that the US must pay its debts by 5 June – at which point the government would default.The deal on the tableOver the weekend, negotiators for Joe Biden and the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, reached a tentative deal to suspend the debt limit and avoid a debt default.The clock then began for members of the House, who had 72 hours to review the deal and pass it through a floor vote.Then there’s a voteThe powerful House rules committee meets to review the deal, called the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, on Tuesday afternoon. The deal is expected to go to a chamber vote on Wednesday.If passed by a simple majority in the House, the bill would then move to the Senate for another review, which could take days. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, told senators to be prepared to vote on Friday and potentially over the weekend, days before the 5 June deadline.Once it moves through both chambers of Congress, the bill then goes to the president’s desk for his signature.What are its chances of getting through?While lawmakers have expressed confidence that the bill would successfully get past Congress, some hardline Republicans have signaled they will not sign the deal.Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a member of the rules committee, has urged fellow lawmakers to vote no on the deal.“This is not a deal that we should be taking,” Roy told Fox News’ Glenn Beck on Tuesday.What’s in the deal?If passed, the deal would suspend the US debt limit through 1 January 2025, well past the next US presidential election, which is in November 2024. But suspending the debt limit is a temporary measure, and the US would need to bring down the national debt or raise the ceiling by the new deadline.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe deal would keep non-defense spending roughly the same for fiscal year 2024 and raise it by 1% in fiscal year 2025.The bill would also place new restrictions on Snap benefits, limiting the number of individuals eligible for food stamps. Unspent emergency aid related to the Covid-19 pandemic, totaling about $30bn, will also be returned to the government.What happens if the US credit score drops?A national default would probably tank the US credit rating, currently at AAA, the highest status. A lower credit rating makes it more risky for international lenders and costly for individuals living in the US to take out loans.The last time the US reached the brink of a national default was 2011. After that, one credit rating agency, S&P, downgraded the US’s credit rating, citing troubled policymaking in Washington. That sent markets tumbling, sending shockwaves through the global economy, and made it more expensive for ordinary consumers seeking to buy a house or a car.What’s next?Concessions had to be made on both sides of the aisle. Biden and McCarthy will need to assuage members of their party ahead of a major election year, in which both are seeking another term.“We have learned from past debt limit impasses that waiting until the last minute to suspend or increase the debt limit can cause serious harm to business and consumer confidence, raise short-term borrowing costs for taxpayers, and negatively impact the credit rating of the United States,” Yellen wrote in a letter to McCarthy on Friday.Failing to increase the debt limit “would cause severe hardship to American families, harm our global leadership position, and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests”, Yellen added. More

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      ‘An egregious act’: debt ceiling deal imperils the environment, critics say

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      The deal to raise the US debt ceiling will have significant ramifications for the climate and nature, by fast-tracking a controversial gas pipeline in West Virginia and limiting the scope of environmental reviews for future developments, environmentalists have warned.The agreement struck between Joe Biden and Republicans who control the House of Representatives states the Mountain Valley pipeline is “required in the national interest” and should be issued its necessary permits within 21 days and be shielded from legal challenge by those who object to it.Environmentalists reacted in outrage at the deal, arguing the 300-mile (480km) pipeline, which will bring fracked gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia, will endanger hundreds of waterways, threaten landscapes including the nearby Appalachian trail and worsen the climate crisis.“Singling out the Mountain Valley pipeline for approval in a vote about our nation’s credit limit is an egregious act,” said Peter Anderson, Virginia policy director at Appalachian Voices, a campaign group that has charted hundreds of environmental violations by the project across the two states.“By attempting to suspend the rules for a pipeline company that has repeatedly polluted communities’ water and flouted the conditions in its permits, the president and Congress would deny basic legal protections, procedural fairness and environmental justice to communities along the pipeline’s path.”The pipeline was recently provided a key approval by the federal government to go through a stretch of forest but is currently stymied by court action that has dogged it for years. Mountain Valley has just 20 miles (30km) left to complete but is several years behind schedule due to opposition from green groups and nearby residents who risk having their land taken for the project.However, Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator, coal baron and the Senate’s leading beneficiary of campaign donations from gas pipeline interests, has vigorously lobbied for the pipeline’s construction and appears to have prevailed in his quest. Manchin, a centrist Democrat, is considered a valued swing vote in an evenly divided Senate.“I am pleased speaker [Kevin] McCarthy and his leadership team see the tremendous value in completing the [Mountain Valley pipeline] to increase domestic energy production and drive down costs across America and especially in West Virginia,” Manchin said in a statement that did not mention Biden. “I am proud to have fought for this critical project and to have secured the bipartisan support necessary to get it across the finish line.”The White House has framed the debt ceiling deal as one that has protected Biden’s key climate achievements, such as the numerous provisions for clean energy support in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, which Republicans were keen to strip away in negotiations.But the agreement does not include any measures to accelerate the expansion of electricity transmission, a crucial factor in whether the shift to renewables will actually materialize, while acceding to Republican demands to curtail the environmental reviews of developments such as oil and gas pipelines.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnder the deal, reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, the US’s first national environmental law, will be limited to just two years for federal projects.Environmental groups, already angered by Biden’s ongoing embrace of large fossil fuel projects, such as the recently approved Willow oil drilling operation in Alaska, said these provisions mean that Democrats should block the debt deal when it is voted upon in Congress this week.“President Biden made a colossal error in negotiating a deal that sacrifices the climate and working families,” said Jean Su, energy justice program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Congress should reject these poison pills and pass a clean debt ceiling bill.” More

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      ‘Whatever it takes’: Biden and McCarthy’s tense journey to debt deal

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      When Kevin McCarthy was struggling early this year to get enough votes from his own Republicans to become speaker of the House of Representatives, Democratic president Joe Biden called the prolonged saga a national embarrassment, then had a little fun.“I’ve got good news for you,” Biden said, pointing playfully at a reporter after a speech in Kentucky. “They just elected you speaker.”During months of tense exchanges over the US debt ceiling, McCarthy has also taken some swipes at Biden. Arguing that Biden should meet him to discuss his demands for lifting the debt ceiling in March, McCarthy made fun of the 80-year-old president’s advanced age.“I would bring lunch to the White House. I would make it soft food if that’s what he wants. It doesn’t matter. Whatever it takes to meet,” McCarthy told reporters.In the last few weeks, however, both men have stopped the put-downs and cobbled together an agreement that will now lead to a congressional vote to suspend the US debt ceiling and avoid a default that would wreak economic havoc on the country.Like the deal they crafted, the relationship the two men forged does not look pretty but appears to have gotten the job done.“I think he negotiated with me in good faith,” Biden said of McCarthy on Sunday. “He kept his word. He said what he would do. He did what he said he would do.”The deal caps federal spending and forces more poor people to work for food aid, concessions that Democrats hate. But it also preserves much of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and punts the next debt ceiling showdown into 2025, which Republicans hate.The two leader are strange political bedfellows. Biden, a veteran former senator from Delaware, talks about the days when both parties would often come together to solve pressing problems. Although he initially called for the debt ceiling to be raised without negotiations, he ended up making compromises.McCarthy, a 58-year-old Californian, is representative of a pugilistic style of Republican politics that took root with the rightwing Tea Party congressional group formed during the Obama administration, which blossomed when Donald Trump was president.He came up through the party ranks pushing tax cuts for companies and reduced government spending and is now presiding over an unruly House Republican membership in which radical lawmakers have threatened to force him out of the speaker job unless he takes a very hard line with the White House.After an initial 1 February meeting at the White House, an optimistic McCarthy predicted that he and Biden would find common ground and meet again soon. Instead, a three-month stand-off ensued.Even after negotiations finally began in earnest, McCarthy tweeted about Biden: “He’d rather be the first president in history to default on the debt than to risk upsetting the radical socialists who are calling the shots for Democrats right now.”But his tone changed as both sides moved toward a deal last week, expressing his respect for White House negotiators, saying: “These are highly intelligent, highly respected on both sides. They know their work, they know their job, they know the numbers.”House Republican Patrick McHenry, a key negotiator in the talks, said last week of the two leaders: “What I saw in the Oval Office yesterday was a willingness to engage with each other in a sincere way – air disagreements, listen.Biden aides say the relationship is largely cordial and businesslike and that the president recognizes the speaker has a struggle on his hands presiding over the various party factions.It may not help their relationship that both men were very close to the other’s predecessor.Biden idolized former Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi, a woman “who I think will be considered the greatest speaker in the history of this country”, he said.McCarthy was an enthusiastic Trump supporter and a frequent flyer on Air Force One with the then-president.He was among 147 Republicans who voted to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory, but eventually acknowledged Biden as the legitimate president.He criticized Trump for failing to stop his own supporters as they stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, but remains in touch with him. More

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      US debt ceiling deal: what’s in and out of Biden and McCarthy’s agreement

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      Details of the deal between Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy take the form of a 99-page bill that would suspend the nation’s debt limit into 2025 in order to avoid an unprecedented federal default, which the White House said on Monday would be “catastrophic for the American people”, while limiting government spending.The Democratic president and Republican House speaker are trying to win over lawmakers to the plan in time to avert a default that would shake the global economy. But Congress will be scrutinizing and debating the legislation fiercely this week.McCarthy said the House will vote on the legislation Wednesday, giving the Senate time to consider it before 5 June, the date when the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said the US could default on its debt obligations if lawmakers did not act in time.With the details of the deal now clear, here’s what’s in and out:Two-year debt limit suspension, spending limitsThe agreement would keep non-defense spending roughly flat in the 2024 fiscal year and increase it by 1% the following year, as well as suspend the debt limit until January 2025 – past the next presidential election.For the next fiscal year, the bill matches Biden’s proposed defense budget of $886bn and allots $704bn for non-defense spending. It also requires Congress to approve 12 annual spending bills or face a snapback to spending limits from the previous year, which would mean a 1% cut.Overall, the White House estimates that the plan would reduce government spending by at least $1tn, but official calculations have not yet been released.Care for military veteransThe agreement would fully fund medical care for veterans at the levels included in Biden’s proposed 2024 budget blueprint, including a fund dedicated to veterans who have been exposed to toxic substances or environmental hazards. Biden sought $20.3bn for the toxic exposure fund in his budget.Unspent money from Covid-19 pandemicThe agreement would rescind about $30bn in unspent coronavirus relief money that Congress approved through previous bills, including federal programs for rental assistance, small business loans and broadband internet for rural areas.The legislation protects pandemic funding for veterans’ medical care, housing assistance, the Indian Health Service and developing the next generation of Covid-19 vaccines and treatments.Funding for the Internal Revenue ServiceRepublicans targeted money that the federal tax agency was allotted last year to crack down on tax fraud. The bill bites into some Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding, rescinding $1.4bn.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWork-for-benefits requirementThe agreement would expand work requirements attached to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Snap, formerly known as food stamps – a longtime Republican priority. But the changes are pared down from a hardline debt ceiling bill previously generated and passed in the House, which are a huge no for progressive Democrats.Work requirements already exist for most able-bodied adults between the ages of 18 and 49. The bill would phase in higher age limits, bringing the maximum age to 54 by 2025. But the provision expires, bringing the maximum age back down to age 49 five years later, in 2030.Democrats also won some new expanded benefits for veterans, homeless people and young people ageing out of foster care. The agreement would also make a small boost to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, which gives cash aid to families with children, making it harder for states to avoid paying.Energy projectsThe deal puts in place changes in the National Environmental Policy Act for the first time in nearly four decades that would designate “a single lead agency” to develop and schedule environmental reviews, in hopes of streamlining the process for approval for energy projects – both involving fossil fuels and renewable energy.The bill also gives special treatment to the controversial Mountain Valley pipeline, a West Virginia natural gas pipeline championed by pivotal Democratic senator Joe Manchin, and Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito, by approving all its outstanding permit requests.Student loansRepublicans have long sought to reel back Biden’s temporary relief on student loans during the coronavirus pandemic. Biden has agreed that the pause in loan repayments will end in late August. Meanwhile, a GOP proposal to rescind the White House’s plan to waive $10,000 to $20,000 in debt for nearly all student borrowers is not in the debt ceiling package. The conservative-dominated US supreme court is due to rule next month on whether Biden has the power to waive the debt.What’s left out?House Republicans passed legislation last month that would have created new work requirements for some Medicaid recipients, but the White House successfully blocked that from the deal. Also absent is a GOP proposal to repeal many of the clean energy tax credits Democrats passed in party-line votes last year. More