It was advice that Mitch McConnell had offered to Joe Biden once already: To resolve the debt limit standoff, he needed to strike a deal with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — and McCarthy alone. But after the first meeting of the top four congressional leaders with the president in early May, the Senate minority leader felt the need to reemphasize his counsel.
It was advice that Mitch McConnell had offered to Joe Biden once already: To resolve the debt limit standoff, he needed to strike a deal with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy — and McCarthy alone. But after the first meeting of the top four congressional leaders with the president in early May, the Senate minority leader felt the need to reemphasize his counsel.
After returning from the White House that day, McConnell called the president to privately urge him to “shrink the room” – meaning no direct involvement in the talks for himself, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
That, McConnell stressed to Biden, was the only way to avert a potentially economy-rattling default.
A week later, Biden and McCarthy essentially adopted that path, tapping a handful of trusted emissaries to negotiate a deal that would lift the debt limit. It was a turning point in an impasse that, until then, seemed intractable.
Having lived through the debacle of a 2011 debt limit fight, Biden would not entertain any concessions for a task that he viewed as Congress’ fundamental responsibility. But McCarthy, prodded by conservatives insisting on sweeping changes to federal spending, was intent on using the nation’s borrowing authority as leverage even if it edged the U.S. closer to default.
The scramble that ensued showed how two of the most powerful figures in Washington — who share a belief in the power of personal relationships, despite not having much of one between themselves — jointly staved off an unprecedented default that could have ravaged the economy and held unknown political consequences. It’s a tale of an underestimated House speaker determined to defy expectations that he couldn’t address a complex debt limit fight, and a president who tuned out the noise from his own party to ensure a default would not happen on his watch.
But it was also a standoff largely instigated by Republicans who argued they needed to use the debt limit threat as a cudgel to rein in federal spending. And even with a resounding 314-117 House vote — followed by a 63-36 Senate vote — the episode is testing the durability of McCarthy’s speakership and his ability to tame a restive hard-right flank.
McCarthy, now emboldened, is unfazed.
He reflected back on his election as speaker after the House passed the debt limit package, referring to his long battle to claim the gavel in January. “Every question you gave me (was), what could we survive, what could we even do? I told you then, it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.”
This account of the weeks-long saga of how Washington defused the debt limit crisis is based on interviews with lawmakers, senior White House officials and top congressional aides, some who requested anonymity to discuss details of private negotiations.
Perhaps most critical to clearing the blockades were Biden and McCarthy’s five negotiators who came to the discussions armed with policy gravitas and empowered by their principals.
