McConnell insists he’s sitting out debt talks — to disbelief

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) insists he will not come up with a rescue plan this time as Republicans and a Democratic president battle over the debt limit. 

McConnell has a long history of negotiating with President Biden on high-profile issues, such as extending the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2010, avoiding a national default in 2011 and avoiding the fiscal cliff at the end of 2012.  

The Senate GOP leader also supported the bipartisan infrastructure package and big new investments in the domestic semiconductor industry, two big Biden agenda items. 

But McConnell says Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) need to work out a deal on the debt limit among themselves, arguing any proposal that originates from the Senate can’t pass the House. 

“The president knows how to do this. … Until he and the Speaker of the House reach an agreement, we’ll be at a standoff,” McConnell told reporters. “We have divided government. The president and the Speaker need to come together and solve the problem.” 

Republican aides say McConnell’s strategy has the advantage of also keeping Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), whom Republicans see as a tougher negotiator than Biden, out of the talks. 

A Senate Republican aide says Schumer also has more “leverage” than House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), who is in the minority and was recently elected to the House Democrat’s top leadership job.  

McConnell’s insistence that he won’t step in at the last moment to cut a deal with Democrats to extend the nation’s borrowing authority is being met with widespread skepticism, however, even from fellow Republican senators.  

“McConnell is probably just sitting there waiting for it to all fail, so he can be asked to come in and be the savior,” said one Republican senator who requested anonymity to comment on what to expect from McConnell in the debt limit fight.  

Other GOP senators say they expect talks between Biden and McCarthy to stall and then for the ball to be in McConnell’s court.  

“I think [McConnell’s] position is, ‘Let’s see what the House can do that makes sense.’ But here’s the reality, the likelihood of the House being able to propose something seems to be questionable. Eventually, Schumer’s going to bring up a bill to increase the debt ceiling, a clean debt-ceiling increase, and we’re going to have to vote on it [in the Senate],” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told The Hill earlier this year.  

A Senate Republican aide disputed that speculation.  

“There is no secret McConnell plan out there. That’s key. Democrats are suggesting that,” the aide said. “That requires Biden and McCarthy to have conversations.” 

McCarthy earned a victory last week when the House voted 217-215 to pass his proposal to raise the debt limit through March 2024 and cut $4.5 trillion in spending.  

Democrats say it’s “dead on arrival” in the Senate.  

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said she doesn’t see McCarthy as a credible negotiator given how unpalatable she believes his proposal is to Democrats on Capitol Hill and the broader American public, and she suggested McConnell could step in to find a way through the impasse. 

“Maybe he will,” she said of McConnell possibly taking over as the GOP point man in the talks.  

Democrats are also trying to keep pressure on Biden not to negotiate with McCarthy over spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit.  

“Our caucus is unified, the president is unified and his group is unified, Hakeem Jeffries and the Democratic House members are unified. Clean debt ceiling,” Schumer insisted at a recent press conference.  

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said he doesn’t think Biden will negotiate with McCarthy on the debt limit.  

“I think he’s always willing to talk about next year’s budget but not talk about conditions for preserving the full faith and credit of the United States,” he said of what Senate Democrats expect from Biden.  

McConnell put together the compromise proposal that avoided default in 2011, the last time there was a prolonged standoff between a Democratic president and a newly elected House Republican majority over the debt limit. 

And he came to the rescue again in 2021, when Democrats controlled the White House and both branches of Congress, but the overwhelming majority of Senate Republicans didn’t want to vote to raise the debt limit. McConnell crafted a proposal that allowed Democrats to advance debt-limit legislation without having to face a Republican filibuster.

Democrats put heavy pressure on McConnell to round up Republican votes for advancing legislation to raise the debt ceiling in the fall of 2021.  

Biden said in October of that year that a national default would be “up to Mitch McConnell.” 

McConnell insisted for months that Republicans would not help Democrats raise the debt ceiling after they passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan shortly after Biden took office.  

But with a national default looming, McConnell, members of his leadership team and retiring senators provided 14 Senate Republican votes to set up a special process to allow Democrats to advance debt ceiling legislation without having to overcome a filibuster. 

Some Senate Republicans accused McConnell and his allies of capitulating at the last moment.

“I believe Democratic Leader Schumer was on the verge of surrendering, and then unfortunately yesterday, Republicans blinked. I think that was a mistake. I think that was the wrong decision,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said at the time on the Senate floor. 

Former President Trump also attacked McConnell and his allies over their votes. 

Trump declared in a statement that McConnell had “conceded, for absolutely nothing and for no reason, the powerful Debt Ceiling negotiating block, which was the Republicans’ first-class ticket for victory over the Democrats.”   

Some of that criticism could be another reason McConnell is publicly taking a back seat in this year’s talks.

Members of McConnell’s leadership team acknowledge McConnell has been at the center of many of the most important bipartisan deals struck in Washington over the past 12 years, but they warn that Democrats shouldn’t count on the Kentucky senator to undercut McCarthy on the debt limit.  

“He obviously has a lot of experience negotiating some of these tough deals. But of course, as we’ve said before, it’s between the House and the White House,” said Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.).  

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), an adviser to the Senate leadership, sounded even more definitive in ruling out a possible debt limit deal between McConnell and Biden.  

“It’s not going to happen,” he said. “I don’t think anything that is generated by the Senate would ever pass the House. An agreement between Biden and McCarthy will. 

“The Senate’s going to sit this one out.”