(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Biden is winning another week in debt ceiling fight while McCarthy disappears from the scene [1] ['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-15 The aim of this meeting was “to begin to develop a consensus about a proposal that can pass the House with GOP votes and strengthen their conference’s negotiating position.” In other words, they don’t have a plan. They are working on a plan that could maybe put them is a position to create a plan that all the Republicans can agree on. In the meantime, President Biden has given them a deadline: March 9. That’s when he’s going to release his budget. We’ve seen, however, how bad Republicans are at completing the homework Biden has assigned them. What they got out of the meeting, House Financial Services Committee chair Patrick McHenry said, was a “healthy discussion” where everyone showed “goodwill” in trying to “to come up with an approach that unifies Republicans and enables us to unlock the rest of the legislative year.” So: nothing of substance. While they’re having their little planning sessions, Biden is on the stump cementing his narrative. That’s helped by reality. Yes, a debt default would be catastrophic. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen got some headlines with that message on Tuesday. “In the longer term, a default would raise the cost of borrowing into perpetuity. Future investments, including public investments, would become substantially more costly,” she said in a speech to the National Association of Counties meeting in Washington this week. That has real effects for everyone, she stressed. “Household payments on mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards would rise, and American businesses would see credit markets deteriorate,” she said. “On top of that, it is unlikely that the federal government would be able to issue payments to millions of Americans, including our military families and seniors who rely on Social Security.” “Let’s not wait until the last minute,” Yellen said. ”I believe it is a basic responsibility of our nation’s leaders to get this done.” The Congressional Budget Office released its updated projection of the timeline for the debt ceiling on Wednesday. The limit was reached on Jan. 19, and the Treasury started taking its legal “extraordinary measures” to shift funds and obligations around to buy more time. That time will run out this summer, the CBO is projecting, between July and September. That’s with a caveat: If April’s tax receipts “fell short of estimated amounts—for example, if capital gains realizations in 2022 were smaller or if U.S. income growth slowed by more in early calendar year 2023 than CBO projected—the extraordinary measures could be exhausted sooner, and the Treasury could run out of funds before July.” There really isn’t a whole lot of time for the House GOP to spend trying to get their shit together, not considering how much time between now and July they won’t be in session, and not to mention the fact they’re a bunch of maniacs. How can you tell when a poll is actually high quality? Natalie Jackson, research director at PRRI, joins us on this week's episode of The Downballot to discuss that and more. Jackson tells us the indicators she looks for to determine whether a survey is worth taking seriously, what she thinks the future of polling aggregation ought to look like, and why white evangelical Christians are the real outliers when it comes to religious groups' views on abortion. Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also break down Democrats' big special election victories in Pennsylvania; new efforts by progressives to pick their preferred GOP opponents in two key Wisconsin races; the first true retirement from the House this cycle; and a proposal to increase the size of the House, which has been capped at 435 members for more than a century. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/15/2153162/-Biden-is-winning-another-week-in-debt-ceiling-fight-while-McCarthy-disappears-from-the-scene Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/