ICYMI: President Biden Secures Bipartisan Budget Agreement

After two years of delivering historic progress for the American people, President Biden this week successfully secured a bipartisan budget agreement that will protect our economic recovery and prevent a first-ever default by the United States.

The agreement is a big win for the American people and our economy. It protects the President's Investing in America agenda that is creating good jobs across the country, protects Americans' health care and retirement security, protects his student debt relief plan, and protects key priorities to lower costs for hardworking families from prescription drugs to home energy.

In recent days, a broad array of columnists and commentators have highlighted how the President successfully worked across the aisle to safeguard the American people's priorities—even in a divided government—and build on his strong record of bipartisan accomplishments on behalf of the American people.

See coverage below:

Washington Post (Opinion): Biden's underrated deal-making prowess strikes again
[Jennifer Rubin, 5/30/23]

President Biden's capacity to overperform after an onslaught of negative press and Democratic hand-wringing is second to none. He did it with the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, NATO solidification and expansion, and now with the debt ceiling deal. It's hard to conceive of an outcome more favorable to Biden…To sum up: 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 House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Biden helps stoke dissension on the GOP side as the extreme MAGA wing denounces the agreement.

MSNBC: Joe Biden just proved his critics wrong — again
[Michael A. Cohen, 5/31/23]

The president's latest win came over the weekend, when he struck a deal with House Republicans to raise the debt limit and work out a budget framework that is likely to avoid a government shutdown this fall. This follows similar successes, such as a bipartisan infrastructure bill, the most sweeping gun control measure in decades and legislation to strengthen the U.S. computer chip industry against China. Biden has also signed into law bipartisan measures to reform the Postal Service, expand veterans' benefits and even protect same-sex marriage. …In the 2020 campaign, many jaded analysts and activists mocked Biden's claims that he could reach across the aisle and work with Republicans. Yet here we are.

Washington Post (Opinion): Biden is delivering on his most far-fetched pledge: Compromise
[David Ignatius, 6/1/23]

Biden's atavistic embrace of McCarthy — two White, male Irish Catholics cutting a deal in private — is hardly the summit of American politics. But it was a good-faith negotiation that solved a big problem. "My whole soul is in this: Bringing America together," Biden said at his inauguration. He meant it, and this week he delivered.

Semafor: The Democrats (mostly) won the debt ceiling fight
[Jordan Weissmann, 5/28/23]

But broadly speaking, the agreement is not radically different from the kinds of 2-year budget deals Congress passed during the Obama and Trump eras. In comparison, the party-line bill House Republicans passed would have slashed about $130 billion from non-defense discretionary spending and capped its growth for 10 years…Republicans also failed to achieve other moonshot goals as well, like repealing Biden's green energy subsidies from the Inflation Reduction Act, or putting new work requirements on Medicaid.

Vanity Fair: Joe Biden Was Underestimated Once Again on the Debt Ceiling Deal
[Molly Jong-Fast, 6/1/23]

The big winner, however, is Biden, who prevailed in a standoff that could have sunk the economy…While Republicans seemed to dominate the airwaves leading to Wednesday night's vote, the often underestimated Biden and his White House team negotiated, arguably, the best possible deal under very difficult circumstances.

Washington Examiner: The winners and losers of the debt ceiling deal
[Cami Mondeaux, 6/2/23]

President Joe Biden: Winner

One of the top wins Biden secured was keeping nondefense spending at 2023 levels despite pushes from Republicans to return to 2022 levels over the next year. Biden also touted provisions that keep welfare program spending at similar levels, including no changes to eligibility for Medicaid or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for veterans or those who are homeless. In exchange for spending cuts, Biden was secured a debt ceiling increase that would last until January 2025 — in other words, he won't have to deal with this problem again until the end of his term. That provision was a huge win for Biden and a source of ire for several Republicans who argue it will lead to unlimited spending.

Financial Times (Opinion): Game, set and almost match to Biden on the debt ceiling
[Edward Luce, 5/31/23]

The result is that McCarthy got little of what he wanted. The debt ceiling will be extended until after the next election, not before. The spending limits will last for two years, not 10. The IRA was preserved, as was Biden's student loan forgiveness. The IRS will continue to upgrade. The spending cuts may even be helpful in a time of rising interest rates. Barring two minor concessions — securing a natural gas pipeline and stricter conditions on people who receive food stamps — McCarthy came up empty-handed.

Guardian: Apostle of bipartisanship: why US debt ceiling deal was a victory for Joe Biden
[David Smith, 6/1/23]

As a bipartisan deal to raise the $31.4tn debt ceiling passed the House of Representatives on Thursday, Biden could also claim vindication for the underlying theory of his presidency: that in the age of polarisation it takes an apostle of bipartisanship and a 36-year veteran of the Senate to reach across the aisle and make deals with his opponents…Only Biden, the argument goes, can bridge divides that seem unbridgeable in the age of Donald Trump.

Washington Monthly: The Debt-Ceiling Deal Shows Joe Biden is a Normal President Just Like He Promised
[Bill Sher, 6/1/23]

Biden was not naïve. He has made Washington functional again.

The debt-limit deal is only his latest bipartisan accomplishment, following historic legislation in support of infrastructure, semiconductor manufacturing, gun safety, Ukraine aid, and postal service reform.

You may not know that Biden, so far, is the first president to manage the government without any agency suffering a shutdown of any length of time since Gerald Ford, with the exception of George W. Bush.

Dallas Morning News: Biden is the big winner in the debt ceiling deal
[Carl Leubsdorf, 6/2/23]

Biden has staked a substantial degree of his presidency in showing that he can work across the bitter partisan boundaries of recent years, already producing the massive bipartisan infrastructure law and measures to spur domestic chip production and protect the health of veterans. This week's agreement adds to that record, providing both a political and an economic plus for a president who has had difficulty persuading Americans of his economic successes.

Justin Wolfers, Economic Professor at University of Michigan, MSNBC: "Look, I think it's a tremendous success. You know, we called LBJ the master of the senate. But I tip my hat to President Biden. What he's done is through a series of very, very clever, really, accounting maneuvers is given McCarthy what looks like something, and what his party has largely voted for, except the right flank. But if you actually look at what he gave up here, it's remarkably little. On paper, it looks like a lot. But we've got two years, just two with spending caps. And to be clear, that's not spending caps on the entire federal government." [5/31/23]

American Independent: McCarthy says Biden stopped him from cutting Social Security and Medicare
[Emily Singer, 6/1/23]

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said on Wednesday that he wants to create a commission to look into future cuts to Social Security and Medicare because President Joe Biden refused to allow any cuts to the programs during negotiations over raising the debt ceiling.

"We only got to look at 11% of the budget to find these cuts. We have to look at the entire budget," McCarthy said during an appearance on Fox News.

When anchor Harris Faulkner asked McCarthy why Republicans didn't see the entire budget during debt ceiling talks, McCarthy replied, "The president walled off all the others."

Joe Scarborough, MSNBC: "We've been hearing it over the past couple of years. even people in Joe Biden's own party said, "old man, you don't understand the way of Washington. you're too old. you can't get bipartisan compromise." And Joe Biden ran over them. one compromise bill after another, one bipartisan achievement after another. We heard the same thing at the beginning of the debt ceiling, you can't even negotiate with him. [6/1/30]

New York Times: The Calm Man in the Capital: Biden Lets Others Spike the Ball but Notches a Win
[Peter Baker, 6/1/23]

The president's approach to the negotiations — and especially their aftermath — reflects a half-century of bargaining in Washington. When someone has been around the track as long as Mr. Biden has, resisting the temptation to spike the ball and claim victory can be critical to actually securing the victory in the first place. From the start of the clash with Mr. McCarthy's Republicans, Mr. Biden has followed the instincts he has developed through long, hard and sometimes painful experience.

The New York Times Morning Newsletter: The House Passed the Bill. Who Won?
[David Leonhardt, 6/2/2023]

Even if the country had no debt ceiling, the two parties would have had to negotiate a budget this year. And the bill that the House passed yesterday — based on a compromise negotiated by Biden and Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker of the House — looks a lot like what a budget deal probably would have…. Given the radicalism of today's Republican Party and its tolerance for political chaos, there was a real risk that these debt ceiling talks would cause an economic crisis. Instead, they led to a classic political deal that left untouched the major accomplishes of Biden's first term. It is a reminder that he is the most successful bipartisan negotiator to occupy the White House in decades.

The New Yorker: The Debt-Ceiling Deal Could Be a Lot Worse
[John Cassidy, 5/30/2023]

To the extent that the House Republicans were trying to exploit the looming breach of the debt ceiling to create, at one blow, a draconian fiscal framework that would dominate American politics for much of the next decade, they failed to achieve their goal.

MSNBC (Video): Steve Rattner: The White House deserves a victory lap on the debt deal
[Morning Joe, 6/1/2023]

"In fact, the White House did get the better of the deal. They're not taking a victory lap at the moment because they don't want to upset what looks like a positive course in the Senate. But, you know, I think you'll see them perhaps do that at some point because they deserve it. We can take a look at some of the provisions. Ed mentioned a few things. This is a comparison between the two bills. This is the House GOP bill that they passed. This is what they said they were prepared to have go into law. This is the deal that ultimately emerged. They wanted -- I'll give you a couple examples. They wanted to cut domestic spending, non-defense, to $555 billion. It was $744 billion in the current fiscal year. It ended up at $704 billion. Ed mentioned the ten-year caps. This is really important. They wanted to cap this thing for ten years. They only got two."

MSNBC (Video): WH and Speaker McCarthy Reach Tentative Debt Ceiling Deal, Avert Default
[Jonathan Capehart,5/28/2023]

"I want to take a step back and just say, you know, we have an agreement in principle that accomplishes two main things. Number one, it takes the possibility of defaulting on our debt off the table, something that would've done tremendous harm to American finances, and Americans retirement accounts. Number two, this agreements preserves the incredible progress that we've made on the economy over the last two years. Remember, over 12 million jobs created signature pieces of legislation over the last two years. All of those are preserved, and locked in minister great meant. To answer your specific question, no, what this does is basically resumes the normal budgeting process.."