As I wrote earlier on Friday, Biden Administration Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen seemed to give in to conservative Republican members’ demands on a “hard deadline” for when President Joe Biden, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and congressional Democrats like Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), would need to complete a deal on the debt ceiling. It was one of three “actions” the House Freedom Caucus warned McCarthy that would need to be a part of any deal in order to garner the House Republicans’ support.
There’s also the fact that all House Democrats have signaled support for bypassing Congress entirely in the process of handling the debt ceiling. They’ve also straight out said there will be a “backlash…in the streets.” Biden and Lloyd Austin even got the military mixed up in this mess.
Now, late on Friday, Politico has received word from its friends at the White House, and among the House Democrats, that they’re ready to blow up the debt deal over one of the other two dealbreakers for the Freedom Caucus: the provision that would add more work requirements to two federal social programs: SNAP and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families:
The White House pushed back aggressively late Friday on the GOP effort to add new work requirements to social safety net programs as part of the debt deal, signaling a deepening divide between the two camps on the issue even as outlines of other parts of a potential spending agreement emerged.
“House Republicans are threatening to trigger an unprecedented recession and cost the American people over 8 million jobs unless they can take food out of the mouths of hungry Americans,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement to POLITICO. He cited GOP demands for “new, additional work requirements designed to tie the most vulnerable up in bureaucratic paperwork, which have shown no benefit for bringing more people into the workforce.”
Bates criticized Republicans for pushing new work requirements for deficit reduction while trying to permanently extend the Trump tax cuts. […]
“President Biden and House Democrats are standing against this cruel and senseless tradeoff,” Bates added.
Republicans are holding the line, though:
Earlier Friday, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s emissary in the negotiations, said Republicans need work requirements in a deal. “Hell no,” he said when asked by a reporter whether the GOP would back down on the issue.
Politico noted that Republicans were not longer asking for work requirements for participants in the Medicaid program.
As this is a breaking story, RedState will provide further details as they become available.
