A Prospect newsletter about the debt limit
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The Access Journalism-House Republican Mind Meld

On today's X-Date, how the relationship between Punchbowl News and
Kevin McCarthy is driving a bad resolution to the debt ceiling crisis

 

 

Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images

By David Dayen

**** I remember Duncan Black (the blogger known as
Atrios <[link removed]>) remarking that Congress would be
a more functional place if every House and Senate office turned off the
cable news networks that buzzed all day long, generating artificial
momentum around politics. I'd like to add an additional observation:
Congress would work better for the American people if House and Senate
offices blocked the morning Beltway tipsheets from their in-boxes.

For years, political intelligence newsletters from Politico, Axios, and
elsewhere have been a key part of the Washington ecosystem, as a sort of
slightly more evolved form of horse-race journalism, where who's up
and who's down is still completely divorced from the needs of the
American people, but at least nominally focused on the policies that we
all will eventually have to endure. What can be lost on the reader is
the razor-thin dividing line in access journalism between reporting the
news and creating it: the way in which the tipsheets launder the desires
of powerful people and pressure their opponents to go along.

That's precisely the dynamic we're seeing from Punchbowl News, the
two-year-old tipsheet that is rather obviously a direct window into the
wishes of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the debt ceiling drama. The
closeness between Punchbowl and the Speaker's office
<[link removed]>
is one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington. McCarthy has called
Punchbowl his first morning read
<[link removed]>.

In this case, there's been almost no daylight between McCarthy's
debt ceiling demands and what Punchbowl has reported as the essential
elements for a deal. Now, Democratic leaders don't have to mindlessly
accept media narratives; they have agency. But pushing the GOP line
through "objective" journalism gives it a momentum it wouldn't
otherwise have.

My colleague Ryan Cooper
<[link removed]>
has already explained how tipsheet culture has normalized the threat to
default on government debt as just another political fight. Jake
Sherman, the Punchbowl co-founder who is college pals
<[link removed]>
with the leader of McCarthy's super PAC, set off this part of the
narrative on CNBC by nonchalantly stating
<[link removed]> that "in
modern times, the debt ceiling is raised with negotiations." This
presumption helped push the White House to the bargaining table.

**Read all of our debt ceiling coverage here**
<[link removed]>

Click to Support The American Prospect <[link removed]>

Sherman proceeded to tweet
<[link removed]> a short
history of the debt ceiling that dismantled his own narrative. Of the 25
debt ceiling increases since 1993 that he listed, he conceded that nine
were clean, and another eight were folded into bills that were passing
anyway. Then the 2011 Obama-Boehner grand-bargain talks yielded the
Budget Control Act, which led to the sequestration cuts. The eight
subsequent increases of the debt ceiling were either clean or efforts to
undo the damage that the Budget Control Act caused, with the debt
ceiling increase folded in.

In other words, every increase of the debt ceiling over the past 30
years was

**not** a hostage negotiation under threat of extinguishing the full
faith and credit of the U.S. government, except one: the 2011
Obama-Boehner debacle. Out of that single instance, Sherman spun a
narrative that was favorable to McCarthy's line that his demands were
routine.

On May 11, after the first staff-level negotiations to avoid default,
Sherman's Punchbowl morning tipsheet exulted that "normal
conversations over the debt limit have broken out." Thanks in no small
part to his work, taking the government's ability to pay its bills
hostage is now widely considered routine.

A review of the past two weeks of Punchbowl editions reveals similar
dynamics. Punchbowl has been at the forefront of claiming that only
one-on-one negotiations between Biden and McCarthy can resolve the
situation. "It was clear to several participants that any potential
agreement would have to be cut between Biden and McCarthy," Punchbowl
wrote on May 9. "Aides on both sides of the aisle have complained that
there are too many people involved in the talks for there to be a deal,
at least right now," was in the May 12 edition. "We've never seen a
fruitful negotiation with more than 10 people in the room," they added
on May 16.

This was McCarthy's key ask; he has wanted to shrink the table and get
congressional Democrats out of the room. Biden succumbed to the twin
pressures of McCarthy and the Punchbowl-set media narrative by agreeing
to the demand
<[link removed]>,
with OMB Director Shalanda Young, Biden consigliere Steve Ricchetti, and
congressional liaison Louisa Terrell negotiating on the White House
side.

It was "something that a lot of people in the talks were hoping for,"
Sherman tweeted
<[link removed]> upon the
announcement. The May 17 Punchbowl edition makes clear who those people
were: "Senior Republicans wanted McCarthy to nail down a deal with the
White House first."

[link removed]

Another Punchbowl talking point is about how long it would take for
McCarthy to pass a deal if he got it. "They'll need an agreement in
principle by next week," Punchbowl wrote on May 10, based on a direct
quote from McCarthy. "It will probably take a week to get a bill through
the House," it wrote May 12.

This ticking clock is based on the claim that McCarthy "agreed when he
took the gavel to give members 72 hours to review legislation." Left
unsaid is the fact that McCarthy broke that promise
<[link removed]>
for

**his own debt ceiling bill**, the Limit, Save, Grow Act. There was no
markup and the final bill did not have a 72-hour window. What's more,
there was no pushback, because of the time crunch.

In other words, this ticking-clock story is another fake narrative, and
helpful only to one person in this negotiation: Kevin McCarthy, who
wants to shorten the window as much as possible to force the White House
to make a deal.

The latest talking point is around work requirements for benefit
programs like SNAP, TANF (formerly known as welfare), and Medicaid.
These are obviously just an obscure way to take benefits away from poor
people, and Democrats are
<[link removed]> loudly
<[link removed]> rejecting
them
<[link removed]>.

I think there's concern that work requirements become the "last man
in," something introduced late in the talks not as a real issue but to
make one side angry, so when they are removed, it feels like a win to
that side, and they overlook the other really bad elements of the
outcome (like multiyear spending caps). If you read between the lines of
Punchbowl's reporting on work requirements, they're kind of
telegraphing that.

On May 12, Punchbowl wrote that rescinding COVID aid, spending caps, and
permitting reform were the keystones of the deal, with work requirements
"far less likely to happen." On May 16, Punchbowl noted, "There will be
a lot of attention given to additional work requirements for SNAP and
other social welfare programs, but that's a heavy lift." They
acknowledged that McCarthy was "pushing hard" for work requirements on
May 17, but that there was "strong resistance among progressives," and
that the issue "will need to be finessed very delicately in order not to
unravel the negotiations."

If you read that knowing that this is McCarthy's house organ, you can
see that they're helping him normalize the idea that an economically
ruinous
<[link removed]>
multiyear spending cap is part of a "relatively straightforward" deal,
and that work requirements are the last man in. This benefits what
McCarthy is trying to accomplish.

"It's becoming clear that the Democratic rank-and-file in both
chambers may have to be prepared to accept spending cuts in order for
this all to work," Punchbowl wrote on May 17. You can see the
normalizing process at work, where Beltway pack journalism determines
the boundaries of discussion. Punchbowl was not describing what
Democrats will have to be prepared to do, it is trying to force them to
do it. There are a whole lot of reasons why Democrats are at the point
where their president is submitting to Republican austerity demands, but
tipsheet culture is definitely playing a role.

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