It’s become almost a tautology. The Democrats fight by the rules and the Republicans ignore the rules. And we are so used to the Republicans outsmarting the Democrats that it is hard to believe that, in the case of the debt ceiling negotiations, the Republicans might be left holding the bag. But that is the way it looks.

That the American government must determine whether it is going to pay its bills every year is, as most of us know, ridiculous. No other country goes through this exercise, and there is no reason we should. This is the way Donald Trump has run his business life (shorting his contractors), but why should the United States run its affairs the way Trump does? And, in fact, perhaps we don’t even have to go through this meaningless exercise. The 14th amendment to the Constitution says that the debts of the country cannot be denied. If a case came before the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court (literalists and originalists as the Justices are) might be forced to agree. But who wants to take that chance, I guess?

So now we have a “deal” that the President and the leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress support. My guess is that it will pass (I often guess wrong) Congress this week and be signed by President Biden. There will be many Republican objectors on the right because, truth be told, they didn’t get what they wanted at all. They wanted spending to go down considerably, and they wanted to show their power; this deal keeps spending where it is, and shows the weakness of the MAGA caucus.

Yes, there are some (maybe many) Democrats who wanted a squeaky clean debt ceiling bill, and this is not that. But, so what? They got most of what they wanted, and they know that they aren’t going to get any more, and they certainly don’t want to country to default. They also want to show a strong win against the right wing of the Republicans.

So I would guess that all, or virtually all, Democrats will support this bill. In the House, you only need a majority to pass it, so if almost all of the Democrats vote for it, even if half, or more than half, of the Republicans do not vote for it, it will pass. And, my guess is that the majority of Republicans, too, will support the bill. In the Senate, where there has not been a groundswell of opposition to a debt ceiling increase, you do need 60 votes. But that just means, if all Democrats vote for it and, say, ten Republicans out of their 49 vote for it, it will pass.

Now, both houses of Congress have arcane rules and procedures, and there may be ways for a minority of members to slow things down and get some leverage doing that. And that might happen. But if this results in a default, long or short term, and social security checks are not sent out in June (for example), it will be clear where the blame lies.

In other words, there is now a deal (I understand the exact language is not yet written), and if the deal is broken and a default results, it will all be on the Republicans. The Democrats win either way, whether the country does or not.

Of course, there may be another loser in all of this. That is Speaker McCarthy. He won his speakership on, what, the 15th vote, having to work out some details with the far right, who opposed him. There could be now an attempt to oust him from his position, and it could be successful, I guess, although I am sure he has calculated otherwise. We will see.

In any event, although there are a lot of devils and a lot of details, it appears that the debt service crisis will soon be behind us. If so, it will give the Biden administration another win and something to talk about. If not, it will still give the Democrats a leg up over the Republicans, at least on this issue.

Yes, Biden started by saying “no negotiations” and McCarthy started by saying “FY 2024 expenditures must be significantly reduced”, and neither achieved their goals. That’s OK – I think Biden can argue that he did not give up anything of import to his program, and McCarthy will say that he is keeping expenditures below where they otherwise might have been had the deal not been made.

But now comes the even tougher task – the appropriations process. Talk about devils and details.