Obama-era debt ceiling negotiation advisers say spending fight worst since 2011
Jack Birle
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Onetime advisers to former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker John Boehner say negotiations to raise the debt ceiling look bleaker than they did under similar circumstances in 2011.
Both former advisers agree that despite there being contentious moments and a near-disaster in the 2011 negotiations, circumstances now make the outlook far bleaker.
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“There’s the potential for it to be very bad,” David Kamin, the former deputy director of the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden, told Politico. “We’re back here, and there’s a real risk to the economy on the line.”
Dan Pfeiffer, a senior aide to Obama during negotiations regarding the debt ceiling between the White House and House Republicans in 2011, said he felt “it was very possible we were going over the cliff” in 2011, according to the outlet, but said the crisis was averted because Boehner “did intellectually and substantively understand why default was terrible.”
Pfeiffer added that he is “not sure that [Kevin] McCarthy understands that, that McCarthy cares, that McCarthy would value the full faith and credit of the United States over his own job.”
Brendan Buck, an aide to Boehner during the 2011 talks, said there are more roadblocks in negotiations between Biden and McCarthy than there were with Obama and Boehner, making him less optimistic about a good outcome.
“I wish I could look at this, having been through a bunch of these, and say there’s going to be a bunch of drama but this is how it gets resolved,” Buck told outlet. “But I don’t know how this gets resolved. There are just huge obstacles here [that] I don’t think were quite as problematic in 2011.”
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The U.S. hit the debt ceiling last week, with the Treasury Department saying it has to take “extraordinary measures” to keep the country from defaulting until June and has urged Congress to resolve the fight to raise the ceiling quickly.
The White House has indicated there is no room for negotiation over raising the debt limit, pointing to Republicans executing raises three times while Donald Trump was president. However, House Republican leaders have said they hope to cut some spending as part of a deal to raise the debt limit.