Last Friday, President Joe Biden delivered a rare prime-time address from the Oval Office touting his plan to sign the bipartisan debt ceiling bill, which will raise America’s spending cap and avert a federal default. In this Q&A, Thomas Gift analyzes the speech, how the debt ceiling law will affect Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s efforts to govern, and what the legislation means for the 2024 election.

What were your key take-aways from Biden’s speech?

For me, the line in Biden’s speech that most resonated was: “No one got everything they wanted, but the American people got what they needed.” It attests to the fact that the debt ceiling bill is, fundamentally, a moderate piece of legislation. Biden claimed credit both for lifting the debt ceiling itself and also his other policy accomplishments, which — unlike this law — have mostly come through down-the-line party votes or executive orders. The speech was vintage Biden. He presented himself as “pragmatist-in-chief”, while still taking a few shots at Republicans. But this wasn’t a doom-and-gloom tirade against “Ultra-MAGA.” Instead, was a more tempered message that could preview his 2024 campaign. It was notable that Biden went out of his way to commend Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy by name for his work on the deal. Admittedly, I’m not sure if that helps McCarthy with rebels in his own party — and maybe that was the point. But on the surface, it seemed to display a degree magnanimity that Americans often don’t hear in Washington’s amped-up partisan battles.

Several Republican presidential candidates, including Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, have criticized the debt ceiling deal. What’s their logic?

It’s easy to retain ideological purity when you don’t carry any responsibility for the consequences. For DeSantis and other Republican presidential candidates, criticizing the bill makes political sense in the heat of the primaries. It’s costless, and it plays to the base. It’s a luxury being on the sidelines, and knowing that your rhetoric won’t push the US off a fiscal cliff. But it’s ultimately cheap talk and divorced from reality. Which is: Republicans hold a paper-thin majority in the House. Joe Biden is president. The Senate is Democrat-controlled. Of course, the Freedom Caucus wasn’t going to get everything it wanted. A decade of hard spending restrictions, work requirements for Medicaid, or a slew of other GOP wish-list items just wasn’t on the table. Maybe McCarthy could have extracted one or two more concessions. But that had to be weighed against the risk of default. This is a centrist bill, and it was always going to be a centrist bill. Pretending to expect otherwise may be smart politics, but it’s still disingenuous.

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How will the debt ceiling deal affect how Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy manage their respective parties?

The debt ceiling bill belies two narratives at once. The first is that Biden is too ineffectual, and too beholden to the political left to forge legislation across the aisle. The second is that McCarthy’s 15 rounds trying to secure the speaker’s gavel left him with no mandate or ability to govern. There’s invariably going to be backlash against both leaders. Progressives will hold a grudge against Biden. And some Freedom Caucus members might even try to call a snap vote to take McCarthy’s job. But I think Biden and McCarthy will emerge stronger, not weaker, from this fight. Both can claim a win, which is what matters most. For that reason, they might even develop more resolve to push back against the ideological extremes going forward. Much of the power that the partisan fringes have comes from the perception that they can singlehandedly torpedo deals. Sometimes that’s true, but not always. With the debt ceiling, Biden and McCarthy proved that they don’t always have to be strong-armed by the poles of their party.

How do you expect debates over the debt ceiling to play out in the 2024 election?

In next year’s presidential primaries, Republicans will likely try to outflank each other on the debt ceiling. They’ll pan the deal, say they would’ve held out longer, and claim they’ve got a secret plan to fight the debt. A critical point, though, is that they’ll largely berate big government in general, rather than line items. The reason is that they know that as soon as they get into particulars, even GOP voters who in the abstract say they want fewer expenditures often get cold feet when they hear about threats to actual programs. That’s most true of spending from which they benefit. In the general election, we can probably expect a different story. Especially if Trump is nominated, it’s doubtful he’ll make fiscal restraint a centerpiece of his campaign. He’s not exactly a Goldwater-esque, small government conservative. He’s a populist. That’s one reason why deficits expanded so much under his watch. Moreover, the electoral upside of being a fiscal hawk isn’t straightforward. According to polling, nearly half of Americans say they actually want a bigger, more robust federal government.

• These remarks are based in part on an interview by Thomas Gift for CNN “Newsroom” on June 3, 2023. 
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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics. 
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