re: #80 PhillyPretzel ✅

washingtonpost.com

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President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) reached an “agreement in principle” to raise the debt ceiling and slash federal spending, clinching a critical first step toward preventing a government default that could be nine days away.

While the full details of the agreement are not yet clear, it offers Congress a roadmap for averting a fiscal crisis, according to two people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to describe the sensitive talks.

Much of the emerging deal is expected to reflect Republicans’ initial demands after party lawmakers assumed control of the House in January and plotted a strategy to leverage the debt ceiling to achieve their policy agenda — ignoring repeated warnings that their brinkmanship could plunge the country into a recession.

In the hours before Biden and McCarthy unveiled their plan, however, some Democrats and Republicans already had started to condemn its size and scope — underscoring the difficult task the two leaders face to muscle legislation through the pitfall-prone, narrowly divided House and Senate with roughly a week to spare.

Conservatives on Saturday appeared on the verge of revolt, with some faulting McCarthy for failing to extract the same level of spending cuts that the GOP-led House adopted last month with no Democratic support. On Saturday, the far-right House Freedom Caucus tweeted that the initial reports of the deal were “unacceptable,” and one member — Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) — predicted it could mean “war.”

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