House Republicans insist that any move to raise the debt ceiling, which was partially breached this week<\/a>, must come alongside cuts in spending. In doing so, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has embraced the far right\u2019s demand for fiscal brinksmanship<\/a> that could potentially see the U.S. default on its debts.<\/p>\n All of this poses a political threat to McCarthy, who seems likely to be forced to either cave on his demands, accept a proposed off-ramp like the fiscal commission Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has suggested<\/a>, or be responsible for a global financial crisis. But before we even get to that point, McCarthy has a bigger problem: math.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear that any combo of cuts that would substantially reduce the federal deficit could even pass muster inside the GOP caucus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At this point, the speaker has yet to specify what needs to be cut from the federal budget in order to satisfy his members. Running through the options he could potentially bring to negotiations with Democrats<\/a>, it quickly becomes obvious that there\u2019s almost no set of proposed cuts that would be acceptable to the White House or the Senate. Moreover, it\u2019s unclear that any combo that would substantially reduce the federal deficit could even pass muster inside the GOP caucus.<\/p>\n Last month, Congress passed a $1.7 trillion omnibus appropriations package<\/a>, funding the government through the end of the fiscal year in October. That topline number \u2014\u00a0and the last-minute scramble to pass the bill \u2014\u00a0has been a point of contention for conservatives, who claim that it\u2019s yet more out-of-control spending from Democrats. But that bill dealt mostly with discretionary spending, which Congress has to set each year and only makes up about 30% of total federal spending<\/a>. Another 8% or so goes to paying down interest payments on the national debt. The other roughly 62% is made up of mandatory spending, including Social Security and Medicare, which are fully funded each year by law. Reducing mandatory spending requires changing the laws that authorized each program.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also worth noting that while the omnibus bill is projected to produce a $1 trillion deficit<\/a>, that would be less than the previous year\u2019s $1.4 trillion deficit. And the Congressional Budget Office score of the bill<\/a> showed that the most recent spending bill will actually reduce<\/em> the deficit by $3.9 billion over the next decade.<\/p>\n Right away these numbers are a problem for McCarthy. While talking about cutting Social Security or Medicare has long been a part of the GOP\u2019s mantra, they\u2019ve been loath to actually <\/em>cut those programs, even when they\u2019ve had control of both houses of Congress and the White House. Former President Donald Trump derided the idea of slashing entitlements<\/a> on Friday, giving Democrats a potential cudgel to beat back any GOP attempt to do so.<\/p>\n Shifting over to discretionary spending, over half of the fiscal year 2023 omnibus package was dedicated to defense spending: $858 billion. In his backroom deal to gain the speaker\u2019s gavel, McCarthy reportedly agreed to cap discretionary spending<\/a> at the previous year\u2019s levels, which would mean rolling back the defense budget to around $780 billion. He defended that potentiality on Sunday<\/a>, telling Fox News\u2019 Maria Bartiromo that there was room to cut inside the Pentagon\u2019s budget, especially \u201cmoney spent on \u2018wokeism.\u2019\u201d But that idea hasn\u2019t sat well with other House Republicans<\/a>, many of whom insist that nondefense spending bear the brunt of any cuts.<\/p>\n Yet if almost three-quarters of government spending is off the table in any final deal, that gives precious little wiggle room to bring down the deficit. It becomes an even harder sell when you consider that during Trump\u2019s first two years in office, his annual budget suggested massive cuts<\/a> to programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, aka food stamps, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Instead, the GOP Congress passed enough increases in federal spending<\/a> that it was as though Democrats had written the bills themselves. <\/p>\n I\u2019m sorry, but the math just ain\u2019t mathing here \u2014 and McCarthy must surely know that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n They also passed the Trump tax cuts, which shrunk federal revenues and blew away any chance of a balanced budget. In the process, even before the pandemic hit, the Trump era saw the deficit balloon<\/a> to levels unseen in times of low unemployment since World War II, as the director of the CBO put it in January 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n To recap, it\u2019s hard to see how McCarthy would slash spending enough to claim victory. Even if he sets a goal of cutting half the current $1 trillion deficit, that roughly $500 billion wouldn\u2019t be able to come from Medicare, Social Security, the defense budget, or any program that Republicans may rail against but voters actually like. I\u2019m sorry, but the math just ain\u2019t mathing here \u2014\u00a0and McCarthy must surely know that.<\/p>\n On the one hand, it\u2019s probably much easier at this point for McCarthy to behave like the Trump White House this time around, setting demands that sound good to fiscal hawks but struggle to gain traction. But much like his Republican predecessors<\/a>, he still would need to actually get any sort of debt ceiling deal to also pass among his rank-and-file while also gaining the approval of the Senate Democrats and President Joe Biden. And given both his narrow majority and the looming threat of a discharge petition<\/a> that could kick him out of the speaker\u2019s office, the numbers don\u2019t seem to bode well for McCarthy\u2019s future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n House Republicans insist that any move to raise the debt ceiling, which was partially breached this week, must come alongside cuts in spending. In doing so, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has embraced the far right\u2019s demand for fiscal brinksmanship that could potentially see the U.S. default on its debts. All of this poses a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[161],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45006"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brandon.ddtest.info\/multisite-test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_focal-760x428,f_auto,q_auto:best\/mpx\/2704722219\/2023_01\/1674101363798_n_reidout_debtceiling_230118_1920x1080-s3lud0.jpg\")
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