US President Joe Biden after a speech at a professional training center run by the International Union of Operating Engineers in Accokeek, Maryland (east), April 19, 2023 (AFP/Jim WATSON)
One wants to be the defender of the workers, the other the guarantor of budgetary seriousness: President Joe Biden and the boss of Republican deputies Kevin McCarthy have entered into a fierce battle, with the solvency of the world’s largest economy at stake.
“The American people need to know what are the competing economic visions that we are talking about today,” Joe Biden said Wednesday at a vocational training center in Maryland (east), being happy to recall that the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives had exposed its program to him on Monday on Wall Street.
The president presented himself as an opponent of the “trickle down theory” – according to which the enrichment of the big fortunes and multinationals automatically “trickles down” to the working classes – and as a champion of industrial and unionized jobs.
“Do you believe (Kevin McCarthy) told the rich and powerful it was time to step up and pay their fair share of taxes? Not a word,” said the 80-year-old Democrat. an increase in the tax burden on the most advantaged.
“Did he tell multinationals to stop hiding their profits in tax havens and offshore jobs? I haven’t heard of such a thing,” he continued, also blaming Republicans for wanting to slash social spending.
– “Catastrophic” –
The American president criticized the Trumpists for wanting to push America “to default if I do not accept their deranged ideas”, which would be “catastrophic”.
Kevin McCarthy returned the courtesy on Wednesday, judging in a speech on Capitol Hill at the same time that the Democrats had “no right to play political games with the debt ceiling”, and castigating their ” extreme positions.
(AFP/Stefani Reynolds)
He once again set out in detail his project: to bring the amount of federal government spending (which he considers out of control) back to the level of 2022, and limit their growth to 1% per year over the next ten years.
In exchange, the Republicans would agree to raise the “debt ceiling” for a certain time.
What is at stake here is an American specificity: the United States is the only major developed economy whose Congress must regularly raise the authorized public debt ceiling.
This famous “ceiling” of 31.4 trillion dollars was reached in mid-January, and the United States has so far escaped default through temporary measures.
– Debt ceiling –
If the Democrats and the Republicans do not manage to agree, the United States could find themselves this summer unable to meet their deadlines, an unprecedented situation that carries danger for the world economy.
Long a formality, this vote has often been turned into a showdown by the Republicans, since the presidency of Barack Obama, but a compromise has always been found.
Will it be so again? Joe Biden, who categorically refuses to negotiate on this famous “debt ceiling”, in any case raises the tension.
He argues that the Republican Party is “no longer that of our parents”. In short: he believes that the conservatives are in the grip of the extreme positions of Donald Trump.
Beyond public finances, it is obviously also the presidential election of 2024 that is at stake, and the ability of each camp to defend its economic and social vision.
The White House is banking on the balance sheet of Joe Biden, who has spent very heavy investment programs, and on his image as a president from the middle class, to decide with Donald Trump, billionaire born in a privileged environment.
To further accentuate the contrast, Joe Biden, who has still not officially launched his campaign, published his tax return on Tuesday, which his predecessor in the White House, breaking with custom, has always refused to do.
© 2023 AFP
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