OPINION:
The way President Biden tells it, the ongoing stalemate over the nation’s debt limit has a simple explanation: MAGA Republicans. If only those unwashed flag-wavers of the opposition party would stand down, the president reckons, their miserly clutching of purse strings would end, and prosperity would flourish upon the fruited plain. Mr. Biden’s reverie does not match reality, though. Culpability for the nation’s economic mismanagement is his, and he has little time to change course.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s efforts to work with Mr. Biden have proved challenging, as the president has thus far crossed arms and scowled at the notion of giving in to spending cuts in exchange for a higher federal spending cap. The nation would have already broken its debt limit of $31.4 trillion in January but for creative bookkeeping by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Around June 1, the nation faces default if bills go unpaid.
Mr. McCarthy may be an “honest man,” Mr. Biden allowed in an interview with MSNBC, but MAGA Republicans to whom he owes his speakership have wandered so far afield that they can’t be retrieved.
“The MAGA Republicans really have put him in a position where in order to stay speaker he’s agreed to things that maybe he believes but are just extreme,” the president said.
The acronym Mr. Biden loves to hate may be a creation of former President Donald Trump, but its meaning — “make America great again” — remains the heartfelt wish of patriots from sea to shining sea. The yearslong effort to tarnish it with the grimy Biden political brush hasn’t dimmed its luster.
Outside the insular bubble that is Washington, reasonable Americans understand very well that the Bidenesque urge to overspend other people’s money is a vice, not a virtue. Faced with a dismal future in which more than $1 trillion in tax money is to be wasted annually on debt interest alone, taxpayers can find no rationality in the White House’s refusal to bargain over spending limits.
Moreover, they see through the president’s oft-repeated claim of achieving “historic deficit reduction” with a spending downturn of $1.7 trillion last year: Those savings were entirely the result of the expiration of funds appropriated and not spent for coronavirus relief rather than presidential prudence. Mr. Biden’s crowing about his fiscal stewardship is as nonsensical as a rooster taking credit for the sunrise.
Accordingly, Mr. McCarthy smartly shepherded legislation through the House last month that would raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion in exchange for a $4.5 trillion reduction in future spending over a decade. The dicey part, of course, is deciding whose ox would get gored if the budget ax were swung. The Biden position: no one’s.
Hurling harsh invective at Trump supporters in and out of Congress only deepens the distrust in the Oval Office’s leadership. Rather than get his Irish up, the current occupant has an obligation to negotiate with his political counterparts.
Continuing to bust the budget will put millions of Americans out of work and earn Mr. Biden the ignoble title of the nation’s most despised president.
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