Republicans approve a list of demands for Biden in exchange for avoiding the US ‘default’

The ‘default’ of the USA is now closer. On Wednesday night, the House of Representatives approved by a single vote a list of demands to open negotiations with the president, Joe Biden, in exchange for allow the Treasury to issue bonds to pay its debts for another year. Some demands that the Democrats have flatly and completely rejected, and that can push the country into a crisis never seen before.

He republican projectnegotiated between the president of Congress, Kevin McCarthy, and the most radical wing of the Republican Party, on which his position depends, would force approve strong cuts in public spendingwould prohibit carrying out several of the president’s electoral promises and would eliminate a large part of the renewable energy investment law which was approved last year. And, by extending the so-called debt ceiling for a single year, he would force a repeat of this process in the middle of the presidential campaign, next summer.

The vote passed by just one vote after hours of negotiations between McCarthy and a dozen Conservative MPs who refused to lower their demands. The final result was 217 to 215with three abstentions (the three absent, who could not vote electronically because McCarthy eliminated this possibility when he took office, would have brought the result to 218 in favor and 217 against) and four Republicans rejecting their party’s project.

The leader of the Senate, Democrat Chuck Schumer, has already made it clear that he has not the slightest intention of bringing this project to a vote, and Biden has added that he will veto it if both Houses were to approve it. Both have dismissed this project as a Republican ‘wish list’, and little short of blackmail, since it would practically imply approving the entire electoral program of the Republicans and giving up their own in exchange for avoiding the bankruptcy of the US for a year.

McCarthy, aware that this text is not going to go ahead, had asked his approve it to “open negotiations” with Biden, with the aim of moving forward at least some point on the list. But the ‘caucus of freedom’, the group that brings together the most radical Republican deputies, have made it clear that they consider this text a “floor” and not a “ceiling”. In other words, they are open to Biden giving in even more, but not to giving up a single word of what they already approved yesterday.

The president’s position, meanwhile, is that avoiding US bankruptcy is a “basic obligation” of all the parties with responsibilities in the Government, and that he is not willing to make legislative concessions to the Republicans if all they offer in return is not to bring the country to ‘default’.

The result is that the US remains immersed in a ‘chicken game’ in which, if no one relents, the country may end up falling down the ‘default’ ravine, sometime between June and August. A situation in which they were already seen in 2011, and that left sequels for a long time. The question now is who is willing to give up their ultimate goals first, or whether both sides believe that driving the US, and possibly the world’s, economy into unprecedented crisis is preferable to caving in to their political rivals.