Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Sunday that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told him that Democrats don’t see “one thing” in the debt ceiling deal in their favor, as lawmakers on both sides blasted the framework of an agreement reached late the night before.
“Right now the Democrats are very upset,” McCarthy told anchor Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” “But one thing Hakeem told me: there’s nothing in the bill for them. There’s not one thing in the bill for Democrats.”
He noted that while some Democrats are upset with the tentative agreement reached, he believes both parties can work together to get it passed.
“But every time that there is an agreement and negotiation between the president and Congress, both parties when they have an agreement come together and vote for the bill because both of them talk about it,” McCarthy said.
Jeffries later said that he had “no idea” what McCarthy was talking about, “particularly because I have not been able to review the actual legislative text.”
“All that we’ve reached is an agreement in principle,” Jeffries told CBS’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”
A source close to McCarthy later told The Hill that he “misspoke that it was Jeffries said that to him, but that other Democrats have told him as much.”
Later at the Capitol, McCarthy appeared to walk back his remarks about Jeffries, telling reporters “there’s a lot in here for both sides.”
McCarthy and President Biden came to an agreement in principle late Saturday to cap spending and raise the debt ceiling to avoid a national default on trillions of dollars in debt. With the bill’s text set to be released Sunday, it faces an uphill battle in Congress as both Democrats and Republicans have voiced criticism about the deal reached.
McCarthy said he expects the House to vote on the bill as soon as Wednesday before it heads to the Senate. While Republicans hold a slim majority in the House, the legislation may be held up if enough House Democrats and conservative GOP members oppose the bill.
Jeffries had warned last week that the Democratic caucus would not automatically approve a deal between McCarthy and the White House if the agreement “undermines our values.”
“It’s a miscalculation to assume that simply any agreement that House Republicans are able to reach will, by definition, trigger a sufficient number of Democratic votes — if that agreement undermines our values,” he said last week.
–Updated at 3:27 p.m.