Biden economic aide: Debt deal ‘very typical’ for divided government

National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti on Sunday said the debt agreement reached in principle on Saturday between President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is “very typical” of a divided government.

“What this does is basically resumes the normal budgeting process. There’s no significant changes to that. It is a two-year agreement on spending caps, which again, is a very typical conversation that you have when you have divided government,” Ramamurti said on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart.”

“So. in effect, this is an agreement that resembles prior agreements that we’ve had when there’s been divided government,” he added.

After the White House pushed for a clean debt ceiling increase and Republicans pushed for an increase tied to spending cuts, Biden and McCarthy reached a deal in principle on Saturday that would raise the debt ceiling for two years and apply new caps on federal spending in the same period. 

The agreement needs to clear the House and the Senate before it can take effect, and the legislative text was not yet available Sunday morning.

Both sides of the aisle have been critical of the tentative agreement. Biden said Saturday that the deal “represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want.”

Lawmakers are expected to be out through the Memorial Day holiday on Monday, but McCarthy said he thinks Congress will meet the looming June 5 deadline by which the Treasury has warned it could run out of ways to avert default.