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A calm beneath the fear of debt default

As leaders in Washington debate lifting borrowing limits and spending cuts, the outcome may be a renewal of political consensus.

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President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy talk after attending a St. Patrick's Day event March 17.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

The current political standoff in Washington over raising the U.S. debt ceiling is really a debate over the federal government’s spending priorities. Yet look deeper, and one can spot a consensus around the core tenet of self-governance.

Take, for example, the White House meeting Tuesday between President Joe Biden and senior lawmakers. Yes, it ended without a plan for Congress to raise the limit on how much the U.S. Treasury can borrow. But both sides outlined the contours of an eventual agreement, reinforcing a virtue of the nation’s founders that good can reinforce good.

“There are probably some places we can agree, some places we can compromise,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said after the meeting. His counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, offered a similar assurance. “Let me first make this point: The United States is not going to default. It never has and it never will.”

The Treasury Department warns it will run out of funds to pay its bill on June 1 unless Congress lifts the debt limit or imposes big spending cuts. In April, House Republicans passed a bill tying the debt ceiling to spending cuts, some of which target the president’s policies. Mr. Biden rejects tying spending disputes to the government’s credit integrity.

Washington has been here before – 78 times, in fact, since 1960. More often than not, raising the debt limit hasn’t raised a ruckus. In stand-offs in 2011 and 2021, Mr. Biden and Mr. McConnell were instrumental in pulling back from the brink.

Both men are steeped in the Senate’s traditions of civility and deliberation. “I don’t always agree with him, but I do trust him implicitly,” Mr. McConnell said in speech on the Senate floor in 2016 paying tribute to Mr. Biden. “He doesn’t break his word. He doesn’t waste time telling me why I’m wrong. He gets down to brass tacks and keeps sight of the stakes.” Mr. Biden expressed his appreciation for the “very measured” approach that Mr. McConnell, in particular, brought to their discussions.

Having a debt ceiling, Kathleen Day, a business professor at Johns Hopkins, wrote recently, “helps remind everyone of the enormous burden our debt is, to the economy now and to future generations.” In recent periods of divided government, the debt ceiling has offered the party in opposition a way to seek leverage. This time, however, it may be having a different, elevating effect.

“As leaders, our place in history depends on whether we call on our better angels,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently told the Monitor. Renewing the norm of consensus, Washington’s leaders may be reaching toward a new stewardship of the common good.

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