Biden goes to war against Freedom Caucus ahead of debt ceiling showdown

Naomi Lim

March 15, 05:57 AM March 15, 06:20 AM

President Joe Biden has a new boogeyman as he and congressional Republicans draw their political battle lines over the 2024 budget and debt ceiling.

But as Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) did before it, the House Freedom Caucus is defending its budget against a well-coordinated attack as the country contends with the prospect of a default this summer.

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When it comes to being honest with the public, Biden "never fails to fail," according to House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R-PA) of his influential group's "budget," which, more accurately, summarizes its negotiation demands.

"Confronted with his abysmal economic record and doubling down on his crippling spending proposals, Biden goes right to another fear and smear campaign," Perry told the Washington Examiner. "For him to fearmonger using firefighters, police officers, and healthcare as his pawns is a disgusting and disingenuous distraction from the real issues facing American families and job creators.”

The House Freedom Caucus and Perry have at least one partner in the Senate: Scott. Biden, in addition to some Republicans, has spent the past year criticizing Scott for his "Rescue America" plan, a response to Biden's "American Rescue" framework, which originally pitched reauthorizing federal laws every five years. Biden responded by saying this would regularly put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block. In reaction to the scrutiny, Scott edited his website to read that the reauthorization provision "was never intended to apply to Social Security, Medicare, or the U.S. Navy."

"We need to bring fiscal sanity back to Washington and I’m standing with my colleagues in the House who are showing that they give a damn about this country and will fight to fix it," the senator wrote in a statement Tuesday. "The debt ceiling is our opportunity to get something done and we cannot squander it by caving to the reckless and dangerous wishes of Biden and the Democrats.”

But Perry and Scott have not dissuaded Biden and Democrats from undermining the House Freedom Caucus's budget, particularly in the absence of a formal counteroffer from the House Budget Committee Republicans, which is expected later this spring.

Denouncing the House Freedom Caucus's budget, which, among other ideas, seeks to reintroduce “Clinton-era work requirements on welfare programs," overlooks how many members will be able to raise money off of Biden and Democrats' complaints. At the same time, they hope condemning the 45 lawmakers will pressure House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to deal with them on the debt ceiling, at a minimum.

The House Freedom Caucus's budget "speaks" to McCarthy's "political weakness," according to one senior Democratic official.

"He essentially sold his soul to win over the speakership to the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Matt Gaetz, and Scott Perry, and all of these people, like Chip Roy, people who, at the end of the day, they feel, rightfully, can flex political muscles on the speaker of the house," he said.

For the official, the budget and debt ceiling "are intrinsically linked" to the 2024 election cycle, with Biden having "a positive, affirmative case to make," while Republicans "cannot figure out what they want to cut the most." For instance, Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley and speculated White House hopeful Mike Pence have endorsed Social Security and Medicare reductions on the campaign trail, he added.

"These things all go hand in hand, and what House Republicans, Senate Republicans are demonstrating to the American people is that if Republicans have the White House, if Republicans gain control, these are the priorities that they will have that are just wildly out of step with what voters are looking for and what families are looking for from their government," he said.

Biden reiterated how budgets reflect values during a fundraiser Monday night after releasing his almost $7 trillion request last week. In that document, Biden repeated his support for an expanded child tax credit, a universal $35 insulin price cap, and a 12-week national paid family and medical leave program, as well as a 25% billionaires minimum tax, a 28% corporate tax, and a 4% stock buyback tax.

Biden asserted Monday that the House Freedom Caucus represents "the extremes" and its budget would decrease veterans benefits, but "it won't cut subsidies for Big Pharma" or the deficit.

"They're not the majority, but they will be able to, I think, in [the] House, be able to be successful in terms of what they're going to do," he said. "What we're going to do is make sure that they have to make their case. ... Look, the stakes are too high for our economy, for our democracy, for our standing in the world. And I intend to build on the progress and finish the job we set out to do."

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young, in addition to top spokespeople from White House communications director Ben LaBolt, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and deputy press secretary Andrew Bates, has amplified Biden's message. In a Tuesday memo, for example, Bates emphasized how the House Freedom Caucus aims to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act's manufacturing and energy initiatives. Young has also accused the group of "playing politics with the full faith and credit of the United States."

"When it comes to spending and what the appropriate level is, this president's happy to talk to anyone," she told CNN last weekend. "As a matter of fact, we funded the government on a bipartisan basis in December. Let's do it again. But let's not hold the debt ceiling hostage to really draconian cuts, all to help the wealthiest in this country, which we saw released by the Freedom Caucus.”

Trump vows to protect seniors from Republicans like Paul Ryan 'disciple' DeSantis

Katherine Doyle

March 13, 09:36 PM March 13, 09:45 PM

Former President Donald Trump vowed to protect seniors from “establishment” Republicans if returned to the White House, attacking a top would-be rival on Social Security and Medicare in his first trip to Iowa of the 2024 campaign.

Trump’s focus on entitlements suggests he believes his populist message lends him an edge over the Republican hopefuls weighing their prospects for the nomination.

In Davenport, Trump likened Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) to the failed GOP 2008 presidential nominee, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), whom he maligned as a member of “the Paul Ryan Republican establishment,” leaning into a distinction that helped propel the former leader to victory in 2016.

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While in Congress, DeSantis “wanted to decimate” Social Security, “severely” cut Medicare spending, and lift the retirement age to 70 years old, Trump said on Monday, noting, “Ron was a disciple of Paul Ryan [who] would constantly vote against entitlements.”

Trump added, “You remember … Democrats used that ‘wheelchair over the cliff' commercial? Very effective. That was about him.”

It’s also a target of President Joe Biden, whose White House has sought to drive a wedge between Republicans in negotiations over the debt ceiling.

Trump has stepped up his attacks on the field of potential GOP rivals, singling out DeSantis in particular. Unmentioned in Trump’s speech was Republican 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley, a U.N. ambassador during the Trump administration and former South Carolina governor who recently called for changing the retirement age for people in their 20s.

Trump’s jabs also come as polls show DeSantis consolidating a groundswell of support with Republican voters. While Trump remains the favorite, the Florida governor polls consistently as Trump’s top rival in the 2024 Republican primary.

DeSantis is said to be carefully weighing a White House bid but has not made an announcement. A slew of appearances in early nominating states as the governor promotes his book have added to the speculation. He was in Iowa and Nevada over the weekend and will travel to New Hampshire next month.

Speaking to reporters aboard his private plane, Trump swiped at DeSantis and credited himself for securing the Florida governor’s victory in 2018, calling him disloyal.

“He was dead as a dog. He was a dead politician. He would have been working perhaps for a law firm or doing something else,” Trump told reporters while traveling to Iowa on Monday, according to Politico. Asked if he regretted his endorsement, Trump responded, “Yeah, maybe. This guy was dead. He was dead as a doornail. ... I might say that.”

Trump acknowledged another potential competitor orbiting the primary contest, Mike Pence, his former vice president, who rebuked his former running mate over the weekend over Jan. 6.

“As far as Mike, I heard his statement. And I guess he figured that being nice is not working because he’s at 3 in the polls. So he figured he might as well not be nice any longer,” Trump said.

Trump has drawn battle lines in the early nominating contest by reviving a message on trade and China that helped secure his victory in 2016.

DeSantis has brushed off Trump’s attacks in recent weeks, equating them to “background noise.”

Social Security cuts vs. tax hikes: The Biden budget battle lines are drawn

W. James Antle III

March 10, 06:46 AM March 10, 06:46 AM

Whatever happens next in the debt ceiling fight between President Joe Biden and congressional Republicans, the battle lines for 2024 are already drawn.

Biden is saying Republicans will gut Social Security and Medicare while the GOP shoots back that the president is going to raise taxes.

For as much as politics have changed in the last eight years, the argument between Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is one that Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill would have recognized.

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Biden workshopped his lines on the big entitlement programs for senior citizens on the campaign trail before the midterm elections last year.

Republicans have railed against tax-and-spend liberal Democrats since Biden was a senator from Delaware voting against the Reagan tax cuts.

But the battle has taken on new urgency now that Biden has unveiled his federal budget proposal while demanding that the new Republican majority in the House do the same.

“So, I want to make it clear. I'm ready to meet with the speaker anytime — tomorrow, if he has his budget,” Biden said in Philadelphia. “Lay it down. Tell me what you want to do. I'll show you what I want to do. See what we can agree on. What we don’t agree on, let’s see what we — we vote on.”

But Biden has already presented his version of what the Republicans’ budget will be, despite their denials.

“Let’s be clear about another key point of my budget,” he said. “I guarantee you I will protect Social Security and Medicare without any change. Guaranteed. I won’t allow it to be gutted or eliminated, as MAGA Republicans have threatened to do.”

The Republican budget, it seems, is either a caricature of a Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) proposal or something out of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign.

“MAGA Republicans’ proposal is not an answer on Social Security,” Biden continued. “And my budget will not cut benefits. And it will — definitely won’t sunset programs, like some of my MAGA Republican friends want to do.”Scott recently revised his plan to specifically exempt Social Security and Medicare, in response to its becoming a Biden punching bag.

Biden did acknowledge Republicans’ State of the Union denials that they will cut Social Security or Medicare, saying they had better keep their word.

“Well, guess what?” he said. “They’re all on camera.”

Republicans have their own characterizations of Biden’s plans, emphasizing that they include tax increases.

“President Biden’s ‘budget’ is dead on arrival,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) said in a statement. “It’s a campaign wishlist of tax hikes and fuzzy math that would do nothing to help Hoosiers struggling with Biden’s inflation crisis.”

“Any budget request that focuses on tax hikes and more spending rather than cutting spending and easing the economic burden on this country is deeply unserious — this budget doesn’t have an ounce of serious proposals in it,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) said in a statement. “The federal government doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem.”

The Republican National Committee circulated a clip of Biden making this Walter Mondale-like statement in remarks previewing the budget late last month: “I’m gonna raise some taxes.”

Mondale lost 49 states in the 1984 presidential election.

If voters believe the tax increases will be confined to the wealth and won’t curtail economic growth, the political consequences for Biden and the Democrats may be limited.

But if Social Security and Medicare are the third rail of American politics, raising taxes isn’t far behind.

The president’s job approval rating is already more than 20 points underwater, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

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Further complicating matters, the battle of the budgets isn’t just about 2024. In the coming months, the debt ceiling will need to be addressed. That’s a real deadline, not just political theater.

Until then, it’s tax increases versus cutting entitlements to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy — a perennial partisan political fight as old as Biden’s career in Washington.

Biden launches opening salvo in debt ceiling fight against GOP with budget release

Naomi Lim

March 09, 05:45 AM March 09, 05:45 AM

President Joe Biden's budget may be an aspirational document with no chance of clearing a GOP-controlled House, but it is also a political document as he braces for what is likely to be a bitter fight with Republicans over the debt ceiling before next year's elections.

Biden hopes to use this as an opening argument against the Republicans before the debt ceiling battle begins in earnest.

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Biden, who has repeated how budgets underscore values, will announce his fiscal 2024 framework in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Thursday, an event overshadowed by the looming debt ceiling.

Biden has pledged not to negotiate with Republicans over raising the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, contending the country's credit rating is too important to risk a default. And despite the prospect of a deadline, far-reaching economic consequences, and the president's desire to be a bipartisan deal-maker, Biden should "hold firm" in that strategy, according to Democrats such as former consultant Christopher Hahn.

"The House Republicans have members who are extremely vulnerable, and if the hard-liners in the party continue to play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States, the 18 GOP members who hold seats in districts Biden won in 2020 will surely blink," the former Chuck Schumer aide and Aggressive Progressive podcast host told the Washington Examiner. "Or at least enough to increase the debt ceiling."

Biden has Republicans "in a bind" because he "rope-a-doped the GOP into taking Social Security and Medicare off the table during the State of the Union," former Democratic operative Sandy Maisel added. Republicans shouted the president down during his address when he suggested lawmakers, including Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), hoped to reform the entitlement programs.

"[On Thursday,] he will put forth his budget proposal, which progressives will think is too accommodating," Maisel said. "Biden will challenge the GOP to come up with an alternative."

"That, I assume, will either be so vague as to be meaningless — cut the waste, which, of course, cannot be isolated — or painful to lots of voters," the Colby College visiting politics instructor and onetime candidate went on. "That will put Biden in a much better position to negotiate than he would be if he said he was ready to talk before the GOP had to put anything forward."

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has vocally disapproved of Biden's strategy, calling on his colleagues to "stop the madness and start acting reasonably and responsibly to get our government's financial house in order." Manchin sat down with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in January to discuss the debt ceiling. The president met with McCarthy a few weeks later in February at the White House.

“There's always times to have arguments and disagreements," Manchin said last week on the Senate floor. "But the looming debt crisis cannot. It cannot basically have the disruption that we have and the discourse and political toxic atmosphere that we have here. We've got to come together for the sake of our great country."

But while Biden is posturing, so too are Republicans. The House Republican Study Committee, for one, has distilled GOP priorities and identified possible presidential concessions, such as lowering fiscal 2024 discretionary spending to the fiscal 2022 level of $1.5 trillion, in addition to introducing a discretionary spending cap for up to 10 years, as well as reallocating unused American Rescue Plan Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and Inflation Reduction Act spending, before the House Budget Committee is due to respond to Biden on April 15.

Previews of Biden's budget promote how it will decrease the federal debt by $3 trillion over a decade. He has also detailed his ideas for Medicare. Specifically, the president is pitching extending Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund “by at least 25 years" by increasing the Medicare tax rate for people earning more than $400,000 from 3.8% to 5% and redirecting $200 billion in savings created by the Inflation Reduction Act's prescription drug negotiation provisions to the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. He is additionally expected to ask for $835 billion in defense spending and a 5.2% pay raise for federal employees.

Bipartisan Policy Center Senior Vice President Bill Hoagland, a budget expert, praised Biden for trying to decrease deficits but asserted that was "not going to reduce the level of debt to [gross domestic product] by a significant amount."

"Just to stabilize the level of debt to GDP at where we are today, I think they need well into the $6 to $8 trillion mark," he said.

Hoagland described Biden's Medicare taxes as "pretty much dead on arrival with a Republican Congress." Instead, the veteran Senate Republican staffer advocated broader simplification of the tax code, combined with efforts to decrease Medicare's growth rate. For Hoagland, nondefense discretionary spending will have to be reduced by "a good 15% to 20%" if the president's total discretionary top line is $1.7 trillion to meet Republicans' $1.5 trillion demand.

"I'm worried about this," he added. "You do have to negotiate; you have to find some sort of a compromise. And that's why I think that setting some sort of a cap on '24 discretionary spending will certainly allow for Republicans to claim that they have saved some money and to move forward."

The White House has been pushed on Biden's emphasis of the budget, traveling to Pennsylvania, a critical presidential and Senate battleground state, to present it. Rather, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has argued that Biden prefers to outline his agenda "in a transparent way."

"The thing that makes us really speak to this even more is because they have talked about ... cutting some programs that are incredibly — two programs and more — that are incredibly important to the American people: Social Security, Medicare, ACA, Medicaid," Jean-Pierre said of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

"That's what they're saying they want to move forward with," she went on. "And the president is saying, 'You know what? I'm going to continue fighting for the American people. I'm going to continue fighting for taxpayers who have paid into these programs since they started their first job, some of them as teenagers.'"