Sometimes presidencies are about things that don’t happen. Joe Biden will be breathing a mighty sigh of relief that the economic asteroid hurtling towards planet Earth turned into a near miss: America is apparently not going to default on his watch.
As a bipartisan deal to suspend the $31.4tn debt ceiling passed the House of Representatives on Thursday, Biden could also claim vindication for the underlying theory of his presidency: that in the age of polarisation it takes an apostle of bipartisanship and a 36-year veteran of the Senate to reach across the aisle and make deals with his opponents.
Only Biden, the argument goes, can bridge divides that seem unbridgeable in the age of Donald Trump.
Such deals come at a price, of course. Not even the White House claimed that the hard-won budget agreement is a cornucopia of delights for the Democratic base. But it was notable that more Democrats than Republicans voted for the 99-page bill, an unofficial scorecard of who got more of what they wanted, and even progressives who opposed it reserved their contempt for its contents rather than their president.
For sure, there will be plenty of time to debate how Biden and Democrats could have played this episode better. They could have raised or abolished the debt limit when they had control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia told the Politico website that if he could “do one thing different, it would have been raising the debt limit late last year”.
The president may have also been lulled into a false sense of security by the shenanigans around Kevin McCarthy’s election as House speaker in January. It took 15 ballots and implied a Republican majority mired in division and dysfunction. But Democrats underestimate Republicans’ ability to fall into line at their peril.
McCarthy managed to steer his unwieldy coalition into passing a debt limit bill stuffed with conservative priorities and spending cuts. If Biden hoped that moderate Republicans would bow to logic – the debt limit is about spending that Congress has already authorised, not future appropriations – and break ranks, rather than embrace the apocalyptic prospect of default, he had to think again.
The president duly cancelled a trip to Australia and Papua New Guinea to hold talks with McCarthy. He deployed a negotiating team that included Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, working such long hours that she admitted to reporters she had run out of clean clothes.
What emerged was a deal that protected Biden’s legislative accomplishments including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, fending off Republicans attempts to repeal the latter’s green energy incentives. The White House also swept aside Republican proposals to slash funding for education, healthcare, law enforcement and social security.
The argument that “it could have been worse” is hardly an inspiring re-election slogan but the White House would contend that it is realistic in divided government. If anyone channels Biden’s bipartisan spirit it is Young, a former staff director of the House appropriations committee who speaks his language of compromise, flexibility and give and take.
She insisted: “Look, the House is not very different from when I was there. You have to have some faith in the governing majority, which I do, because I have a lot of respect for members on both sides of the aisle to do what’s best for the American people. And that is not some pollyannish thing. I know them. And I’ve always thought we could get here if we let the extreme go away.”
Letting the extreme go away, as Young puts it, has typically been a doomed enterprise since Trump’s descent on an escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 signalled the descent of the Republican party into a personality cult. The far-right Freedom caucus unleashed sound and fury against the deal, inadvertently complimenting Biden on having outfoxed McCarthy (quite an achievement for a man they also insist is senile).
On the left, there was opposition from Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives. They condemned work requirements for food aid programmes for some poor Americans, reduced funding for the Internal Revenue Service that could make life easier for wealthy tax cheats, and the speeding up of the permitting process for a natural gas pipeline in West Virginia (home of the conservative Democratic senator Joe Manchin).
This could chip away at Biden’s long-term support, fuelling a perception that he is pivoting to the centre as 2024 approaches. But again, it could have been worse.
There was no mass revolt against him. Progressives understood that “Maga Republicans” had taken the economy hostage and left Biden with no choice but to negotiate the ransom. Congressman Jamie Raskin said: “We need to make sure this kind of legislative extortion never happens again.” The president constantly benefits from the “Don’t judge me against the Almighty, judge me against the alternative,” dynamic.
The bill now heads to the Senate after a House vote that, as a purple blend of Democrats and Republicans, could hardly have been more Bidenesque in hitting the sweet spot between left and right. It was his predecessor who wrote a book entitled The Art of the Deal. But it is Biden who continues to exceed low expectations by finding common ground in the disappearing middle.
