--- title: Growing Fear Among Liberals: Biden Will Cave to Republicans description: Biden has a history of ceding to GOP demands in pursuit of a deal. Democrats fear it's happening again with the debt limit. canonical: https://time.com/6282188/democrats-biden-folding-debt-limit/ author: Brian Bennett article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-05-23T23:31:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:48:52.205Z article:section: Politics og:title: Democrats Fear Biden Folding Too Easily in Debt Limit Fight og:description: Biden has decades of history compromising with Republicans, sometimes over the protests of fellow Democrats who think he's giving away too much. Some of his allies worry it's happening again og:url: https://time.com/6282188/democrats-biden-folding-debt-limit/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6b5476ed5dd85df8/698a3d48db298738b6269074/GettyImages-1246891438.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: President Biden Delivers State Of The Union Address og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Democrats Fear Biden Folding Too Easily in Debt Limit Fight twitter:description: Biden has decades of history compromising with Republicans, sometimes over the protests of fellow Democrats who think he's giving away too much. Some of his allies worry it's happening again twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6b5476ed5dd85df8/698a3d48db298738b6269074/GettyImages-1246891438.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Democrats Fear Biden Is Folding Too Easily in Debt Limit Talks > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. 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It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=893edc17-7234-4e49-b5a4-8153d6fa2b93&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy Says He’s Sending Negotiators to White House to Finish Debt Limit Talks [Watch (HLS stream): House Speaker Kevin McCarthy Says He’s Sending Negotiators to White House to Finish Debt Limit Talks](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/jh0ctZfW.m3u8) (2:13)  _Published 2023-05-24. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he's sending Republican negotiators to the White House to finish out debt limit talks. But he's warning that the two sides are “still far apart” as they try to reach a budget deal with President Joe Biden._ by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/) and [Nik Popli](https://time.com/author/nik-popli/) May 23, 2023 11:31 PM UTC  President Joe Biden shakes hands with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy before he delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, on February 7, 2023 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. President Joe Biden shakes hands with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy before he delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, on February 7, 2023 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. Jacquelyn Martin-Pool—Getty Images by [Brian Bennett](https://time.com/author/brian-bennett/) and [Nik Popli](https://time.com/author/nik-popli/) May 23, 2023 11:31 PM UTC In late December 2012, Republicans controlled the House and refused to raise the debt limit without spending cuts. Sound familiar? With the country days away from defaulting, a list of suggested concessions from the Obama White House arrived in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office. The Nevada Democrat threw the papers in his fireplace and told the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, that the Democrats weren’t budging. With Reid willing to let the Republicans drive the country to default, McConnell found himself a more risk-averse negotiating partner. He called Joe Biden, then President Obama’s vice president, and Biden gave McConnell something he wanted: a concession that pushed the whole process back to two months later. Reid was livid. It was not the only time Democrats on Capitol Hill felt like Biden had negotiated away their leverage. Biden’s love of compromise solutions is a pattern that goes back to his decades in the Senate, says Jim Manley, a former senior communications adviser to Reid and the Senate Democratic Caucus. “He understands how radical the Republican Party has become,” says Manley. “The bad news is his heart is still as a senator who wants to sit down and legislate.” Now, days away from the country hitting a congressionally-determined debt limit around June 1, anxiety is growing in some Democratic circles that Biden is falling into his old placating ways, ultimately handing Republicans too much for raising an arbitrary ceiling to pay bills on spending already approved by Congress. “I worry about everything,” Rep. Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts, told TIME when asked if he’s worried that Biden will too easily cave to Republican demands. “I have no reason to believe the Administration is going to go along with any of this. But I want to make sure that there’s meaningful pushback here.” McGovern has been one of the most outspoken advocates for Biden to resist any compromise with Republicans on the debt ceiling, and instead raise it on his own by invoking an untested legal strategy that argues that it would be unconstitutional under [the 14th Amendment](https://time.com/6278100/debt-ceiling-14th-amendment-legal-theory/) for the U.S. to fail to make its debt payments. “This is not a negotiation, this is a ransom note,” McGovern said of Republicans. “But whatever, that’s up to \[Biden\].” Biden had already given House Speaker Kevin McCarthy a major concession: coming to the table at all. He’d said for months that he wasn’t going to let Republicans use their refusal to pay the country’s debt become a reason for such talks. But that’s exactly the position he has now found himself in, with less than two weeks before the country is expected to default. Biden rattled some fellow Democrats last week when he [told](https://time.com/6280609/biden-republicans-debt-ceiling-bill-work-requirements/) reporters, minutes before flying to Japan, that he might accept Republican demands for new [work requirements](https://time.com/6276193/republicans-work-requirements-debt-ceiling/) on government assistance programs. “I voted years ago for the work requirements that exist, but it’s possible there could be a few others but not anything of any consequence,” Biden said. Republicans also want federal spending cut below last year’s levels and relaxed permit requirements for energy projects. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the GOP proposal that passed the House in April would lead to 600,000 Americans losing health insurance and 275,000 Americans each month losing food subsidies. Biden is pressing Republicans to think beyond cuts in reducing federal deficits, including changing the way that carried interest is taxed and including projected savings to federal programs from new guidance that allows Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, said a person familiar with the negotiations. “The President should make it clear that it’s patriotic to pay our debts,” Rep. Ro Khanna of California, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tells TIME. “We can talk about reducing the deficit, but we must pay our bills first. President Biden is constitutionally obligated to do so.” While a recent CNN poll found that [60% of Americans](https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/23/politics/cnn-poll-debt-ceiling-increase-spending-cuts/index.html) say Congress should only raise the nation’s debt ceiling if it also cuts spending, Biden is facing growing pressure from the left to not cave—or cut a deal at all. They argue making any concessions at all will only encourage more of the kind of brinkmanship the parties are currently locked in. --- ### More from TIME --- Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, expressed confidence in Biden, but argues that the White House will need progressive votes to pass any debt limit deal. “That means no to work requirements, no to big spending cuts and no to bad permitting reform,” she tells TIME. Jayapal wants Biden to stick to the promises he made on the campaign trail to reduce costs for working Americans. “We didn’t vote for the Joe Biden of 1996 or 1986\. We voted for the Joe Biden of 2020,” Jayapal says, adding, “This is not a time, when hunger is at its all-time high, to institute burdensome work requirements.” Further frustrating many liberals amid the current standoff is that they threw away the chance to avoid it. After the elections last year, while Democrats still controlled both chambers of Congress, they discussed either raising the debt ceiling by a massive amount or eliminating it altogether before Republicans took control of the House. Senators Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona independent, reportedly blocked those efforts. As the negotiations with Republicans have dragged on, more Democrats in the Capitol have expressed regret for not fighting harder for that strategy last year. One person close to Biden dismissed such ruminations as “magical thinking,” particularly since the votes were never there. Asked what should happen if the government runs out of money in early June and Republicans still haven’t budged, McGovern said that Democrats have filed a procedural move known as a “discharge petition” that would allow a majority of lawmakers in the House to overrule the Republican leadership and call a vote. But he acknowledged that finding enough Republicans to deploy such a strategy would be difficult. ## Transcript Look this is this is, this is, this is urgent but this is not political this is about doing the work of and The Business of the American people. This is something that we have said over and over again for the past five months that this is, this is for Congress to act. This is their constitutional Duty. So we've been very clear and we've been we've shown urgency from here. And look, we think Republicans saying that that the White House is not showing any, urgency is a ridiculous. Question, is a ridiculous statement for them to be making. And so we've been saying this for months Congress must pass, Congress needs to act and will continue to play the line on that speaker said this yesterday that they these talk these conversation to conversation, yesterday was productive. And I think that's important when you're hearing that and these types of negotiations, as we know, we're very difficult, right negotiations? This is nothing new. There are incredibly tough. And so when you hear it from both sides saying that they're productive, I think that's an important statement. Just not going to get into any further details. Coming out of the meeting yesterday. We said this, the president said this week. That both the present in the speaker reiterated that the fault is off the table. So now we have to do this in. Good faith, we have to move forward, just open up, sending our negotiation team down to the White House. Today, to try to finish up the negotiations with the white house. There's a number of places that we are still far apart. I mean, I could be this hard. So every Democrat voted against raising. The debt ceiling. Nothing has happened in the Senate. I'm not a senator, I don't control the Senate. Why didn't they passed something? The president he didn't talk to us for 97 days. So don't blame me for reaching out to the Democrats for begging. The president to meet with me or trying to find it and don't blame us Republicans. When we put a reasonable Bill together that we actually took Democrats ideas, well let me tell the American public, I am not going to give up. We're not going to default. We're going to All this problem. I will stay with it until we can get it done. But let's be honest about this. We have to spend less than we spent last year. 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