Lawmakers Created A Needless Crisis. They're Close To Solving It.

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

News, Daily News, Politics

4.4 • 25.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2023

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Democrats took a big gamble: they chose not to raise or eliminate the debt ceiling when they had full control of government, betting that it could create a headache for the Republican-controlled House. Republicans, after repeatedly raising the debt ceiling without issue during the Trump administration, held global financial stability hostage to secure minor policy wins.

Now, after flirting with disaster for weeks, the parties appear close to ending a crisis of their own making.

This episode: political correspondent Kelsey Snell, congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.

The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Peter coming from the rotunda of the United States Capitol on my last day as a Senate intern.
0:06.0	This podcast was recorded at 208 PM on Tuesday, May 30th.
0:11.0	Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be relieving the amazing memories I made here.
0:17.0	Okay, here's the show.
0:21.0	Ah, well that's the thing cannot operate without interns, so thank you for what you do.
0:25.0	I was a Senate intern way back in the day.
0:27.0	Yeah.
0:28.0	And you still came back to work there.
0:30.0	I know.
0:31.0	Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.
0:33.0	I'm Kelsey Snell, I cover politics.
0:35.0	I'm Deer Jervaus, I cover Congress.
0:37.0	And I'm Mara Lias and National Political Correspondent.
0:40.0	The president and Republican Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, have drafted a deal to avoid a government default.
0:47.0	That's after flirting for months with not letting the government make payments on the money at O's,
0:53.0	which could topple the global economic system and send everything into chaos.
0:56.0	So this last minute deal has a lot of compromises and like most big negotiations,
1:01.0	it includes some things that are already angering pockets of lawmakers in both parties.
1:06.0	So Deer Jerva, just to get started, can you give us kind of the broad outlines of what's in this deal?
1:11.0	Right, so this is a modest deal.
1:13.0	I mean, this is similar to other kinds of deals we've seen in divided government around negotiations overlifting the debt ceiling.
1:21.0	This deal lifts the borrowing authority through 2024 that is past the presidential election in November 2024.
	...

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