White House: We’ll Try to Undo Some Debt Bill Concessions in Future Bills

On Thursday’s broadcast of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” White House National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti stated that the Biden administration plans to try to get some of the concessions it made in the debt limit bill back in future legislation.

Host Leila Fadel asked, “A lot of progressives, including your former boss, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), are really unhappy. She called parts of the deal, ‘really bad’ because of the work requirements for people seeking food relief, concessions on student debt repayments, climate change, and no new taxes on the wealthy. What is the administration’s message to progressives like Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who will soon be voting on this?”

Ramamurti responded, “Well, look, as the President has said, this is a compromise. And a compromise means that nobody gets exactly what they want. There are certainly elements of this agreement where we share some of these concerns, where we think that, if it were up to us, we wouldn’t have included it, but they were priorities for the Republican Party. And, in a world where we have divided government, the deal is going to have to reflect that reality.”

Fadel then asked, “Do you see these as temporary concessions or something the administration plans to try to recover in future legislation?”

Ramamurti answered, “Well, yes. I think it at least opens the door or it leaves open the possibility for changes in the future, of course. For example, some of the reductions in funding for the IRS — something that we didn’t necessarily agree with — of course, it doesn’t foreclose the possibility of adding more money for that department in the future.”

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