Biden, the Republicans, and the Debt Ceiling

Biden, the Republicans, and the Debt Ceiling

On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Brian Beutler discusses the dangers of caving in on the debt ceiling.

Jeet Heer
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Joe Biden has a divided mind when it comes to the Republican Party. On the one hand, he’s all too aware that the GOP has become radicalized and is an existential threat to American democracy. On the other, Biden, drawing on his many decades in Washington, is drawn to the idea of bipartisan compromise and acts as if it were his duty to elevate the more moderate wing of the Republican Party. We can see the two sides of Biden’s approach to the opposition party as he tries to navigate through the debt ceiling crisis. Biden has invoked the idea of taking the debt ceiling weapon off the table by invoking the 14th Amendment even as he has also indicated a willingness to cut a deal.

It’s unclear which side of the equation will win. To take up the issue of Biden’s handling of the GOP and the debt ceiling crisis, I spoke with Brian Beutler, editor in chief at Crooked Media. Brian edits a very fine newsletter, Big Tent, which can be found here.

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Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets. 

Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.  

As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war. 

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Jeet Heer Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.


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