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There’s an old Bill Withers song called “The Same Love That Made Me Laugh.”
The chorus goes like this:
Well and why
Must the same love that made me laugh
Make me cry?
I think the title is an apt description of the relationship many liberals have with President Joe Biden. There’s an undeniable thankfulness that Biden defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and, among some, maybe even an admission that someone with Biden’s centrist background was best equipped to win that race. Yet those same centrist tendencies often annoy and unnerve liberals with Biden actually in the White House.
The ongoing discussions Biden is holding with Republican lawmakers about the nation’s debt limit provide yet another example of this frustration.
Progressive Democrats are making clear to the Biden administration that acquiescing to GOP demands to drastically cut and alter social programs in exchange for raising the debt limit (i.e., paying the country’s debts) would be a betrayal of many voters who helped elect Biden in the first place.
Republicans have spent the better part of the past month sending the message that they want new work requirements added to social welfare programs. (Here’s a helpful Vox article explaining how such “work requirements” are actually cuts in disguise.) And speaking to reporters Sunday, Biden seemed to express an openness to additional work requirements for the federal food stamp program.
The president appeared to pour water on the idea a day later, but not before the prospect of him caving added to progressives’ frustration.
Comments from Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Mich., helped summarize the disdain.
“We did not elect Joe Biden of 1986,” she told Politico on Monday. “We elected Joe Biden of 2020.”
The reference was to Republicans noting that Biden once touted his support for some welfare requirements in 1986, when he was a U.S. senator.
But we’re a long way from 1986. Several members of the House Progressive Caucus gave comments to Axios that echoed Jayapal’s sentiment.
“It’s profoundly destructive and it also threatens to weaken the president,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., told Axios.
And it looks like word has spread around the Democratic caucus. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York reportedly told members of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee on Monday night that “work requirements are a nonstarter” in the debt limit discussions.
I agree with that stance for reasons my MSNBC colleague Steve Benen just laid out in a MaddowBlog post: Refusing to pay the nation’s debt is akin to hostage taking, and lawmakers shouldn’t be rewarded with favorable media coverage or political concessions for doing so.
That said, there’s really no telling how this ultimately plays out. Speaker Kevin McCarthy is an extremely weak leader who has little pull over his caucus thanks to Republicans’ slim majority in the House, and he said as recently as Tuesday that work requirements are a “red line” for GOPers.
Not raising the debt limit could drive the economy off a cliff. But it looks like McCarthy and company are putting the pedal to the metal.