Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast.

Today is Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023. I am John Pajor. It's the editor of commentary with me as

always executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe. Hi, John. Media commentary columnist Christine

Rosen. Hi, Christine. Hi, John. And Washington commentary columnist and fellow with Christine

senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Matthew Contnetti. Hi, Matt. Hi, John.

So Matt said the debt ceiling negotiations over the weekend were disastrous because Biden was

away in Japan and that he needed to be back for things to proceed. And then yesterday he and

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy got together and guess what matters have proceeded. I think we can see

the light at the end of the tunnel based on the way they're both talking. There will be some kind

of a putative spending freeze. We don't know quite what year it might be last year as opposed to

this year. It might not be next year. But the the obvious logic of the way that they're both

talking is that something is going to get done before June 1st, which is what is that a week from

tomorrow, I guess, or maybe a week from Thursday. Hard to see how there is no resolution of this

based on the upbeat way that they both talk, even though they haven't reached a deal yet. But if

they have some kind of weird outline sense that, well, how Kim Jeffries, the minority leader of the

House basically said, there's going to be a deal and some people aren't going to like it,

which is an endorsement of my theory yesterday that there that what will happen is something will

be struck that will allow a bunch of Republicans on the right and a bunch of Democrats on the left to

vote against it as long as everybody else votes for it. And then it'll pass with 300 plus votes in

the House and go to the Senate. We're presumably it will it will also pass. Does that?

Anybody disagree with that, Matt? Well, I think we're not quite there yet. I do think it was

important to have Biden and McCarthy together. They're the politicians. They both know

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