Biden ‘Teed Up’ 2024 Win By Signing Debt Bill, Democratic Senator Says
Debt-ceiling battle showed Republicans as "extremists," Sheldon Whitehouse adds
President Biden's “teed up” a win in next year's elections by signing legislation to raise the federal debt ceiling, according to one longtime Democratic senator.
Biden signed the legislation into law Saturday without ceremony which raises the federal debt ceiling and codifies relatively modest cuts in federal spending which Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy insisted be a part of the deal.
Signing the law, the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, allows the government to continue paying its bills and represented the successful outcome of what was months of political gamesmanship and arduous negotiations to get the Republican-led House to approve the needed increase to the nation's debt limit.
The new law also represents a victory of sorts for Biden, as McCarthy and the House Republicans had been insisting on even more drastic cuts to federal programs in exchange for a vote to raise the debt ceiling and avoid government default.
“Well, I think if you look at the quiet signing ceremony that Joe Biden had, he did not take a big victory lap. I think he understands that in the cage match of Washington D.C. politics, he gave the Republicans one heck of a thrashing. But in the world of policy and of families and of people going to work, there was nothing in that bill that was very good for anybody in America,” said Sen Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). “But what he did do was he teed us up for 2024 quite well by showing that the Republicans were extremists, by putting the entire House Republican caucus on record voting for a bill that would cost 700,000 jobs and provoke a recession, and being unwilling to change one crooked tax loophole in the tax code.
“They defended all of the junk in the tax code. So politically, it was a very smart move. I think it tees him up to move forward towards ‘24 pretty effectively,” Whitehouse added.
Biden has indicated that he intends to seek reelection next year, which could well be a rematch from 2020 as former president Donald Trump is currently the distant frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president.
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