Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex Over the past week, President JOE BIDEN has been defiant that he will not cut Medicare or Social Security in a future fight with Republicans over raising the nation’s debt ceiling. “Ain’t gonna do it,” he told a crowd Monday at the Democratic National Committee. But accompanying that resolve have been a series of related remarks that have left fellow Democrats baffled and nervous. The first came from the president, when he balked at legislation to simply eliminate the debt limit, which caps how much the government can borrow to meet existing obligations. The second came from press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, after she was asked if the president would also rule out cuts to discretionary spending. She did not firmly close the door. “I don’t have anything else to share on any policy updates,” she said. Pressed for clarity on Jean-Pierre’s remark, White House spokesperson ROBYN PATTERSON replied: “We can’t respond to every congressional Republican scheme, whether it’s raising health care costs, stripping Medicare’s ability to bring down prescription drug costs, or cutting seniors off at the knees. But this administration will oppose any effort to play reckless games with economic catastrophe.” For Biden’s fellow Democrats, however, this is akin to a family going for a drive, seeing a gorge ahead and deciding that, instead of tapping the brakes, they’ll remove the airbags. “They’re not prepared for what is right around the corner,” said JIM MANLEY, who served as former Majority Leader HARRY REID ’s chief spokesman. “As an institutionalist, I’m not surprised that the president is sticking to these ill-advised norms. It doesn’t make it less frustrating. He is failing to recognize the damage Republicans will do with this tool.” For Democrats, it is increasingly an article of faith that Republicans will win back the House and, sometime in the first quarter of 2023, refuse to pass legislation to raise the debt limit without concessions from Biden. Republicans are openly talking about this scenario. And it's one Democrats lived through in 2011. Back then, the country came perilously close to default — saved only by an 11th-hour deal (one Democrats grew to hate) negotiated between then-Vice President Biden and the Senate minority leader at the time, MITCH MCCONNELL. It was such a shambolic process that BARACK OBAMA vowed he would never negotiate around the debt limit again. He argued it was intellectually ridiculous to use the “financial well-being of the American people” as “leverage.” But it was also strategic, since he left Republicans with a choice: force a default or move on. And move on they eventually did. But not before Democrats took one precaution. Reid demanded Obama sideline Biden from the 2013 debt ceiling fight. As another former Reid aide, ADAM JENTLESON, recalled, there was fear Biden would open the door again to negotiations. “One hundred percent, yeah,” he said. Flash forward nine years and those fears are mounting again. Biden’s refusal to consider a bill to eliminate the debt ceiling entirely has put him at odds with his own Treasury secretary, JANET YELLEN. And the White House’s insistence that it wants a clean bill, without an accompanying insistence to rule out negotiations entirely, has put Biden at a more conciliatory place than his former boss, Obama. The lingering hope for Democrats is that this is all pre-election posture, that once the midterm votes are cast, the White House’s tone will harden. At a minimum, they are pleading with the administration to take the issue off the table in the lame duck session, while there is still Democratic-control of government. On Monday, JASON FURMAN, the former director of the National Economic Council, suggested that the party use reconciliation (which would eliminate the need for 60 votes in the Senate) to pass a bill that raised the debt limit by “$100 quintillion.” He was only being partially facetious. Hiking it by that amount would eliminate debt ceiling standoffs entirely without having to rely on Republican votes. And while the attacks may come, they’d be long forgotten by the next election and would surely beat the prospect of a calamitous economic standoff likely to come without action. The Biden team, he argued, can’t claim to be ignorant of those realities. After all, they lived through them. “In 2009 and 2010, I didn't think we were about to be held up on the debt limit. Maybe we made a mistake and should have thought more ahead. But it was not obvious,” said Furman. “Now it is so obvious that this is going to be a terrible, terrible thing over the next two years, there is no excuse to not look forward and take advantage of what could be the last two months of unified Democratic control of the government.” MESSAGE US — Are you White House spokesperson ROBYN PATTERSON? We want to hear from you! And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com .
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