How to Wrap the Noes?

With the debt and pet ceiling crisis now averted, what to say about the deal, and those who opposed it

Hindsight is 20/20

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The final tally in the House was 314 for the debt ceiling deal, 117 against. In the Senate, 57 for, 42 against and one not voting. Overall it was a pretty healthy vote in favor though plenty of noes to go around both parties.

So tell us kids. What did we learn?

Well first off we learned there were at least a few adults in the room. President Biden. Speaker McCarthy. Their negotiating teams. The “whips” who whip the votes and tell their caucuses what leadership needs them to do for the good of the country and the party. The members of each caucus who listened to the whips and did what they needed to do.

But what about the noes? What can we learn about them? Add the House and Senate noes together and we are talking 159 elected Congress men, women and Senators, who collectively with their vote, said: “Fuck the economy, fuck your deal not negotiated to my liking, fuck all the jobs that will be lost if we vote no and fuck the stock market which is going to tank, because I am voting No, No, No, No, No.

Ever wondered why people say no or another expletive five times, sometimes three times, but never four or six times? Seems “odd,” wouldn’t you say?

What would have to be true?

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The question “what would have to be true” is an underused and under appreciated tool according to people who study strategy. Such people, also called “strategists,” strike us as the right people to turn to if we are to better understand what we might learn about the noes where the debt ceiling is concerned.

In a world where there is increasingly little agreement on facts announced as facts in mainstream media, there was an inordinate amount of agreement across the entire political spectrum that a U.S. default on debt would have been “catastrophic.”

The word “catastrophic” was itself a broadly used, widely accepted term by all parties, left, right and middle. It wasn’t just a default the nation was flirting with. It was a “catastrophic default.” Not calamitous, cataclysmic, disastrous, ruinous, cataclysmal, or catastrophal. Catastrophic.

For our part, the rapt Wrap editorial team is partial to the word catastrophal. How it rolls off the tongue.

Be that as it may, if across the partisan divide we can agree to a fault that a default would have been catastrophal, how is it that 159 of the people we’ve elected to high office in this country – allegedly to serve us, protect the constitution and improve our lives – voted to undermine our economy, tank our stock portfolios, ruin our quality of life despite all those the well-agreed-upon facts about what a no vote would mean? Love it or hate it, the Biden-McCarthy deal came together with no time to spare and it was all that stood between our nation and a catastraphal global recession.

In our best effort at strategery (not a real word) the Wrap asks the question: What would have to be true for an elected congressman, congress woman or senator to cast a no vote under those circumstances?

Pulling back the curtain on the noes

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By asking ourselves “what would have to be true,” perhaps we gain some insight. What’s great about this exercise is how non-partisan it’s going to be. Seventy-one House Republican suckwads voted no to the deal that stopped a catastrophal U.S. default. They were joined by 47 ultra progressive House Democrats. Thirty-seven Senate Republicans voted no. They were joined by five far left Democratic Senators who voted no. All these noes were apparently equally willing to throw our economy and country under the bus.

Or were they? What had to be true for these no votes to be cast?

Roast of the “wads” on the far left and right

Allow us to re-pose the question to the proper people. What would have to be true, Mr., Ms. or Mrs. Senator or Congressman for you to vote no on the Biden-McCarthy debt ceiling deal, which prevented a catastrophic U.S. default? We can only imagine these limited possibilities:

1. You are selfish and fixated on nothing other than your personal political agenda. You are willing to make everyone suffer because you’d rather defend your ideology, whether on the left or the right, because you’d rather be right than help your constituents live a better life.

2. You think tanking the economy is a master stroke that stokes the American electorate in 2024 to help Republicans capture both the White House and the Senate. Win at all costs because the ends justify the means. And you don’t give a rat’s ass if that political calculation throws the global economy under the bus and makes your own constituents miserable. So long as they blame Democrats and vote R in the next election, you coo with that.

3. Perhaps another kind of cowardly political calculation crossed your mind. You figured enough other politicians were around in both parties to do the right thing and vote in favor, thereby giving you the ability to vote no without actually causing the catastrophic default. You decided you could afford to make whatever lame ass political statement you want to take to your extreme base because enough others would protect your ass by voting the way you really should have voted. A high stakes game you playing there my friend!

4. You are a hard-right suckwad who actually believes in your heart of hearts, despite all what knowledgeable economists proclaimed, that the need of the U.S. Government to spend less is more important than the catastrophic economic impacts your obstinance on government spending will cause. Hard for us to imagine this - we just doubt your sincerity but hey, it could be true!

5. You are a hard-left suckwad and actually believe in your heart of hearts that your ultra left progressive constituency will reward you for fucking up the U.S. economy on the principle that low income beneficiaries of social programs without dependents should not be asked to meet minimal requirements that are easy to skirt to prove they are at least trying to get a job as a condition of collecting government assistance.

6. You actually believe in your heart of hearts that the 14th amendment gives the President the ability via executive order to direct the Treasury to pay the country’s bills without negotiating with the majority party in the House, even though the President said it would take the courts well past the date when default would occur to sort through the inevitable challenges and lawsuits rejecting such creative constitutional interpretation.

We agree that reasonable people can disagree, but how palatable to you are these “what would have to be true” statements and how much leeway are you inclined to cut for the 159 far left and far right legislators who decided to just say no?

Who really won in the end

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One simple way to answer would be to say we all did; the left, the right and the political center. All Americans. Because catastraphal things were averted. But of course, consumers of media want to know who won more - in sheer partisan terms, and the media never met an appetite it did not want to fill. Let the pronouncement of winners and losers commence!

Of course, the Wrap is media too, and you know we deeply want to fill your appetite as well, so we ask and answer the question like this: Who blinked first - McCarthy or Biden? Whose stock went up (apart from ours the day Biden signed the deal.)

Pundits aplenty are opining in opposite directions. Biden blinked by agreeing to negotiate despite his many weeks of insisting that spending and the debt ceiling are two different topics that should not be tied to one another. The left faults him for creating a precedent the minority party is sure to use again to get what it wants, beginning in two years when the ceiling must be lifted again.

Wrong, say White House apologists and ranking House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, who point to that terrible House Republican bill averted that would have slashed $3.5 trillion in spending and forced poor people to slaughter their first born to secure continued federal assistance.

McCarthy is justifiably winning plaudits, including from left-leaning media, which is always a telling sign. He delivered the votes he needed despite his fractious party, littered with far right suckwads who all voted no. And yet, they say odds are good he’s going to keep his job as Speaker.

Naturally, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle of all these things. We thought Bloomberg News did a credible job summing it up this way:

In truth, the legislation [signed today by President Biden] marked a radical departure from the roughly $3.5 trillion in cuts Republicans aimed for over the next decade. The resulting agreement is likely to save less than half as much over that 10-year period, but only if lawmakers adhere to spending caps that are essentially voluntary.

The bill largely leaves Biden’s economic agenda untouched, with the exception of a limited rollback of some IRS funds and the end of a payment pause on federal student loans that was expected to expire anyway. The proposal imposes new work requirements for the beneficiaries of some federal aid, including childless adults who receive food stamps. But it actually increases spending in the program — and is expected to cover more people — while sparing Medicaid, in contrast with the original GOP bill.

All we know is that by the end of trading last Friday, our portfolio was up, not down. For that we are exceedingly grateful to all the yays. Who did the right thing.

That’s your Wrap.