Top Biden negotiator ‘concerned’ about debt ceiling precedent

One of President Biden’s chief negotiators in the debt ceiling standoff with Republicans said Wednesday she was concerned about the precedent set by the talks. 

Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), who was among the small group of negotiators, told Axios economics reporter Courtenay Brown the debt ceiling is not the place to “play partisan politics.”

Though Biden for months said he would refuse to engage in negotiations over the debt ceiling, he ultimately struck a deal with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) that included a number of spending concessions in exchange for GOP votes on raising the borrowing limit. 

“The problem with D.C. is once you set a precedent, it is hard to get out of it,” Young said Wednesday. “So I am concerned.”

Republicans first used the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip in 2011 under then-President Obama, with Biden heavily involved as vice president. Like Biden this year, Obama repeatedly said he would not negotiate, pushing for a “clean” debt ceiling bill, but ultimately engaged in talks and agreed to spending cuts. 

Following Biden’s first meeting with McCarthy about the debt ceiling in February, the two went months without speaking again, until Republicans in the House passed their debt limit plan at the end of April. 

However, even after Biden and McCarthy came to an agreement May 28, the president stood by his insistence that it was not technically the fruit of a debt ceiling negotiation. 

“I made a compromise on the budget,” Biden said. “Could you think of an alternative?”

During the Axios event, Brown asked Young why the White House is framing the deal as a compromise given that Republicans seemingly got their way. 

“The Biden administration initially said they wanted a clean debt limit bill, no spending cuts,” Brown said. “Republicans wanted spending cuts, they got spending cuts.”

“Didn’t the Republicans win?”

Young said that because Republicans control the House, they had a say in the outcome, but she noted the cuts were well short of initial GOP demands.  

“What’s that saying about marriage? You can be right, or you can be happy,” Young said. “We chose to put the American people first.

“In divided government, this is about the deal that you would expect to see.”