Freak Cavalcade, But Not More

I’ll have to see a bit more. But I believe we’re seeing signs that Kevin McCarthy has essentially outmaneuvered the core freak brigade in the Freedom Caucus — about 20 or so members. They’re all saying it’s a terrible deal. But they’re not saying more than that. As we noted over the weekend McCarthy has two critical members of that group on his team — Greene and Jordan.

Taking Stock

We now know the basics of the deal between Biden and McCarthy and a vote is set.

Let’s take stock of where we are.

First, just to catch us up on earlier posts, the deal is broadly what was leaked at the end of last week. It’s a much better deal for White House than I think almost anyone expected. It’s roughly what you would have expected if the two sides had engaged in a normal budget negotiation this fall.

Here are a few points to consider.

Fedus Ex Machina?

From TPM Reader RC …

You were wondering how Biden was able to get such a good deal; in the end all this drama just amounted to getting the budget-negotiation process started early, with the GOP’s main takeaway being something (spending freeze) that their control of the House already guaranteed them via the tool of passing continuing resolutions.

Joe did a far better job than anyone imagined he could, for about the 79th time in a row.  But that said, the key thing to recognize is that Biden’s hand was much stronger than anyone I read seemed to understand.  What the media got right is, if a default destroyed the economy, that would hurt Joe/Dems in the general; even if people in some sense knew it was the GOP’s fault, they’d still mostly follow the heuristic “if things are going well, I’ll vote for the incumbent; if not, throw the bums out!”

But consider this: what if a default _isn’t_ devastating for the economy?  And what if Joe and Kevin both know it?  Well in that case, default is fine for Biden, because he can then blame whatever economic difficulties occur between now and Election Day on the GOP-created default!  Of course not all such blame will stick, but the point is, if the default _doesn’t_ meaningfully damage the economy, then it’s a net positive for Joe’s re-election chances, because it means he’ll get at-least-a-little-bit reduced blame for whatever bad things (recession, slow wage growth, inflation, etc.) were going to happen anyway.