Debt deal is a win for sanity

Now the nation begins to breathe a fiscal sigh of relief. The threat of a calamitous debt default will be averted under a high-pressure agreement between President Joe Biden and GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

The House voted, 314-117, on Wednesday for this urgent bipartisan compromise bill. Barring the bizarre, the Senate will soon complete the job of pulling the country back from the fiscal cliff. The bill suspends the federal debt limit, currently at $31.4 trillion, until January 2025. This was the final week the Treasury could keep shuffling funds around to avoid more debt. Money for the government to pay its bills was set to run out Monday.

The drama marked the fifth such cliffhanger since 1995. This one, like the others, created a game of partisan chicken. Absurdly, the debt ceiling imposed under a 1917 law applies to spending already committed by Congress. As we've said before, this law needs reform so that spending and borrowing at least can be coordinated and these dramas avoided. That said, the latest overall deal to avert fiscal disaster should be acceptable to all but the most extreme partisans on both sides of the national divide.

The narrow White House concessions that earned McCarthy’s approval would cut projected federal deficits by $1.5 trillion over a decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That figure includes $188 billion in savings from reduced interest costs. Most of the bill's deficit reduction comes from capping discretionary spending other than defense. Pentagon and veterans’ programs aren't cut, nor are Social Security and health benefits.

Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program rules would change. The maximum age for certain work requirements gets raised from 49 to 54, for example. “It’s just a punitive way to take food away from people,” said Ellen Vollinger, of the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center.

The bill also pares back funding that was to go to the IRS aimed at increased revenues through audits of top earners. Given “Defund the IRS” cries from some in McCarthy’s conference, that’s a relatively mild upshot. To environmentalists' chagrin, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat, comes away with approval he sought for the so-called Mountain Valley project to pipe natural gas across parts of his state and Virginia. 

Long Island’s three functional members of Congress — GOP’ers Nick LaLota, Andrew Garbarino and Anthony D’Esposito — acquitted themselves well by voting "Yes." Long Island’s dysfunctional member of Congress, George Santos, acquitted himself poorly by voting "No."

Avoiding unprecedented disaster can't be seen as a high bar. But Biden and McCarthy managed to look straight, reliable and skillful with a compromise that bends to some Republican budget aims. The deal douses a default threat that, while always unlikely, could not be ignored. Both sides worked past the noise of Washington’s zealots and exhibitionists, making this a relatively constructive moment of conciliation.