Well, it appears we may not default (fingers crossed, wood knocked, etc). President Biden and Speaker McCarthy struck a larger budget deal that includes a two-year extension of the debt limit. People on the Left and the Right are unhappy, but that is to be expected. No deal gets the agreement of the Democratic president and the Republican Speaker and is universally praised.

The details are still coming out, but according to Jeff Stein of the Washington Post, the deal includes:

— Debt ceiling raised 2 years

— Domestic programs frozen next year, up 1% ‘25. Inflation-adjusted cut

— Boosts defense, VA $

— Some tightening of work requirements on TANF, SNAP

— Energy permitting (details tbd)

— Claw back some new IRS $

Let’s be clear, this is shitty public policy foisted on the nation by a radical Republican House willing to blow up the economy and cause millions of jobs to vanish. Efforts to deal with deficits that do not include asking the wealthy and corporations to pay what they owe are cruel and wholly unserious. The tightening of access to aid for the most vulnerable Americans serves no purpose other than performative cruelty to appease the MAGA base.

But this could have been way worse in so many ways. The devil is very much in the details, but it seems like President Biden and his team outplayed McCarthy...