WASHINGTON: Speaker Kevin McCarthy left his first White House visit with confidence that he and President Joe Biden could negotiate a spending deal, but the real test may come in negotiations with his own Republican conference.
McCarthy, who had to bargain with hardline conservatives to win his speaker bid after 15 rounds of voting, leads a fractious caucus where some members are willing to gamble with the nation's credit score and global economy to try and get the federal spending cuts they want.
But what those cuts are, nobody seems to know.
Their writ large approach seems to be take the hostage first and then they’ll figure out later what they want," Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., ranking member of the House Budget Committee.
McCarthy and other Republican leaders have said cuts to Social Security and Medicare should be off the table in debt limit and spending negotiations, a pivot from their midterm campaigns when they said everything was on the table.
House GOP Whip Tom Emmer the congressman tasked with the big role of corralling or "whipping" the votes said he expected McCarthy would assure Biden Wednesday the country would not default on its debt and Social Security and Medicare wouldn't be part of the negotiations.
McCarthy didn't give Biden specific spending cuts or levels of spending cuts the House GOP would accept, he told reporters at the Capitol Wednesday night after their meeting.
After facing numerous questions in recent days about spending cuts, Emmer said in a statement Wednesday night, "Democrats and the media want to fearmonger about spending cuts. House Republicans are talking about spending reforms.
Some of the conservative think tanks in Washington, D.C. influencing government spending, such as the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Renewing America, have proposed billions worth of cuts each to Defense, Housing and Urban Development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Health and Human Services.
Even with billions in cuts to those programs, to get to FY2022 budget levels without touching Social Security and Medicare seems nearly impossible, Democrats said.