Biden’s administration has been negotiating with Republicans to prevent a government default and has come up with a plan in which they have won on substance. Despite Republicans’ success in claiming that the deal included deep spending cuts, the Biden team believes that the actual cuts could total as little as $136 billion over the two enforceable years of the spending caps that are central to the agreement. They forced Republicans to include a plan in the legislative text to penalize Republicans’ most cherished spending programs if they failed to follow the contours of the agreement. The Biden team let Republicans claim victories on political talking points that they needed to sell the bill to their party, while they won when it came to the details of the text and the many side deals that accompanied it. Although the deal included new work requirements that could push 750,000 people off food stamps, the Biden team sought to counterbalance it with efforts to expand food stamp eligibility for veterans, the homeless, and others, which Republicans agreed to do. Biden views it as a good deal, and as the Senate prepared to pass the agreement, he was pleased to know that a larger number of Democrats in both chambers would vote for the deal than the share of Republicans supporting it. The negotiating teams came to the table with divergent views of the drivers of federal debt in recent years with the White House negotiators blaming Republican tax cuts and Republicans blaming Mr. Biden’s economic agenda. However, they eventually reached an agreement just days before a potential default.
