Sinema says McCarthy’s debt limit bill is a sign of progress but won’t pass Senate
Emily Jacobs
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Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) says she hopes that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) passing his debt ceiling legislation will bring President Joe Biden and Democrats to the negotiating table, but shot down any suggestion the bill will make it through the Senate.
McCarthy was able to hold enough of the House Republican Conference together to pass his debt ceiling budget proposal, which is meant to serve as an opening salvo in negotiations with the White House, on Wednesday. Biden, backed up by Senate Democrats, has stood firm in his refusal to negotiate over the debt limit.
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Calling it “good” that McCarthy was able to get something through his chamber in a “very difficult climate” politically “in order to kick-start conversations,” Sinema told KTLR’s Arizona Morning News that the bill in its current iteration is not acceptable to her and most other senators.
“The question you asked, though, was whether or not that bill will move in the Senate or if it can get the votes,” the Arizona senator said. “The answer is no. It’s not designed to do that. There is no world in which that bill was designed to get a vote in the United States Senate.
“The design of the bill,” she explained, “was to start a conversation for negotiations” between Biden and McCarthy, noting that the latter had “accomplished what he needed to.”
The debt ceiling, or the top amount the federal government can borrow, will either need to be raised or abolished sometime this summer to avert a debt default. Economists have long warned that such a default would wreak havoc on the economy.
McCarthy’s legislation pairs nearly $4.8 trillion in deficit reduction measures with a debt limit increase into the next year. The bill would return government agency funding to 2022 levels and cap annual increases at about 1% annually, except for the Pentagon. It would also roll back parts of Biden’s expansive health, climate, and tax laws, expand mining and fossil fuel production, and impose work requirements on social programs.
The White House has decried the bill as an attempt at political “hostage-taking” and vowed that Biden would veto it if it reached his desk, though the likelihood of such legislation passing the Senate, where Democrats control the chamber 51-49, is slim.
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Despite her unclear political future — the Arizona senator is considered one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the chamber up for reelection in the 2024 election cycle — Sinema has maintained her status as a coveted centrist vote in the closely-split Senate.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), another Senate kingmaker, has repeatedly urged Biden to negotiate with McCarthy, saying in his most recent statement on Thursday, “Speaker McCarthy did his job, and he passed a bill that would prevent default and finally begin to rein in federal spending. While I do not agree with everything proposed, it remains the only bill moving through Congress that would prevent default and that cannot be ignored.”