Lisa Desjardins:
That’s exactly correct.
And I’m glad you’re pointing this out. Two things here. First of all, the House knew this was coming since September. All of Congress knew this was coming since September. And so did president-elect Trump. Now, what happened here is, there was a very large bill that Speaker Johnson negotiated with Democrats that he presented to his chairmen, but did not get them to weigh in on.
That bill had essentially these items in it, plus more policy, a little bit, a bunch more spending in it and some health care policy. Then president-elect Trump and Elon Musk weighed in. They wanted the debt ceiling. So, speaker — Trump, Speaker Johnson added that. That didn’t work.
Now that’s been taken out. Essentially, we have gone through all of this as a sort of learning curve for both Speaker Johnson and president-elect Trump as to how the House can work and also how it doesn’t work.
One other thing I want to hit on really quickly in the end here is about the debt itself. This was a pervasive and important substantive issue to many of the Republicans who were negotiating here with their own party. And looking at this debt deal, I want to describe what their handshake deal is with president-elect Trump.
They made a deal to increase the debt ceiling, or they said they would try, by $1.5 trillion in the spring or in January or so. And in exchange, they want to find $2.5 trillion in mandatory spending cuts. That’s a level we have never seen before. That may not be easy to do. And, of course, they would need agreement from the Senate as well. But this is the deal they have with Trump.
Now, a reminder to folks. Currently, the U.S. national debt stands at $36 trillion. And that level is going up and up. The interest on the debt is nearing a trillion dollars a year. So that’s why this is a concern. It is a substantive issue for many of these Republicans. And that’s not going to go away, nor will the complexity of dealing with it in the next Congress. It may only get harder.
