What AOC doesn’t understand about McCarthy’s leverage
Conn Carroll
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Progressive Democrats are doing their best to shape the final debt limit deal currently being negotiated between Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and President Joe Biden this week, including holding press conferences to call on Biden to invoke the 14th Amendment and filing discharge petitions for a clean debt limit hike.
As part of the campaign, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) gave an interview on Thursday billed as a “warning to Joe Biden,” but during the course of the interview, AOC tried to undercut McCarthy’s leverage.
“What is really important, I think, to understand here is that no matter what, Kevin McCarthy, he needs Democrats to bail him out,” AOC said. “This is not a situation of him holding all of the cards. … His party is not united. And not only is it not united by a little … most of the evidence is pointing that he only has two-thirds of his caucus, and he may need many, many Democratic votes.”
The problem with AOC’s analysis is that what evidence we do have of party unity shows Republicans are more united than Democrats, that evidence being that House Republicans united to pass a bill that raised the debt limit. Democrats have no plan to raise the debt limit.
Earlier this week, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) filed a discharge petition to bring legislation to the floor that would raise the debt limit without any attached reforms, but as of Friday, not all Democrats have signed it. House Democrats are not united.
And that doesn’t even begin to look at Senate Democrats. From the public statements they have made, it does not appear that either Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) or Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) are inclined to vote for a clean debt limit hike either.
So when AOC says McCarthy will need some Democratic votes to pass a compromise debt limit plan, well, Biden and the Democrats need Republican votes too!
AOC’s attack on McCarthy as having no leverage on the debt limit because his party isn’t united made a lot more sense before House Republicans united and passed a plan that raised the debt limit.
AOC, and the White House for that matter, just seem completely unable to comprehend this new reality.