Whew. Debt Ceiling Brinksmanship Ends With An Agreement.

There are several ways to look at last night’s House vote to raise the debt ceiling and curb federal spending: Either the Democrats bailed out Republicans by voting “yea“ in larger numbers than the GOP, or Dems realized that for once a national financial crisis would be blamed on them and decided not to risk it.

I’m going with the latter. 

Final vote, as I write this Wednesday night is 314 yeas, 117 nays. Only 218 affirmative votes were needed to pass the compromise that was hammered out by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the president.

Looks like 165 Democrats voted for the bill, joined by 149 Republicans, including Rep. Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene, two conservative firebrands who might have been expected to join the 71 ultra-conservatives who voted against the agreement.

Vindictive members of the GOP better not try to remove McCarthy from the speakership because they didn’t get what they wanted in the agreement. McCarthy did an extraordinary job with his slim 4-member majority. The Republican actually forced Biden to the negotiating table after the arrogant president foolishly refused to compromise for 97 straight days.

The president never thought the GOP would pass a spending bill of its own. But they did and it was an excellent one.

Neither side likes the version of the bill that passed. 

Republicans wanted to take federal spending back to pre-covid levels. That didn’t happen. Democrats - according to Biden’s mouthpiece, Karine Jean-Pierre -  considered it “cruel” to increase the work requirement for able-bodied adults with no dependents who receive food stamps.

But ordinary Americans know that getting a job is not cruel, it’s empowering. And taking government handouts when you’re capable of work is demeaning. Or ought to be.

In a fiery speech after the vote, Kevin McCarthy pledged to redouble his efforts to secure the measures that were not included in the bill.

“Starting tomorrow,” he vowed.

Provided the Senate doesn’t engage in any 11th-hour shenanigans, Americans can relax knowing that some sort of economic catastrophe isn’t on its way, beyond what the Biden administration has already set in motion.

Well done, Speaker McCarthy. Don’t stop now.