With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Payne Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here! Have a tip? Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. In 2011, Vice President JOE BIDEN led the Obama administration’s negotiations with Republicans to raise the debt limit and prevent a disastrous default on the nation’s debt. A decade later, the Biden administration is preparing for the sequel. The White House hasn’t explicitly ruled out negotiating over the debt ceiling this time around, though at least one Biden aide has spoken out against it in the past. “When it comes to the debt ceiling you either a) negotiate with terrorists or b) you don’t,” JARED BERNSTEIN, a longtime Biden adviser who’s now a member of Biden's Council of Economic Advisers member, wrote in a blog post in 2012. The White House declined to comment but pointed to press secretary JEN PSAKI’s comments to reporters last month that Biden expected Congress to raise the debt limit “in a timely manner.” If Biden does decide to negotiate, he might find it harder today in an even more polarized Washington than it was a decade ago, former Sen. MAX BAUCUS (D-Mont.) said in an interview. “As difficult as it was to find agreement then, it’s probably more difficult to find agreement today,” he said. The coming clash over the debt limit will be the first since the Obama administration. (Congressional Republicans routinely voted to raise the debt ceiling during the Trump administration.) Senate Republicans have said they’re unlikely to vote to raise the debt ceiling — the legislative limit on debt taken on by the U.S. Treasury, which expires July 21 but can be extended until the fall if the Treasury Department takes extraordinary measures — without concessions from Democrats. And Democrats are unlikely to make any concessions. Many in the party are still smarting from past negotiations and believe the lesson of the 2011 crisis was simple: Never try to strike a debt limit deal again. “I can assure you Democrats are not negotiating over the debt ceiling in 2021,” said Sen. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-Md.). Van Hollen was one of a handful of lawmakers whom Biden convened at Blair House in 2011 to hammer out a deal to raise the debt limit. The group — which included Sens. DANIEL INOUYE (D-Hawaii), JON KYL (R-Ariz.) and Baucus and Reps. ERIC CANTOR (R-Va.) and JIM CLYBURN (D-S.C.) as well as Van Hollen and several Obama administration officials — met in the Capitol two or three times a week. The talks went well, right up until they collapsed in late June, according to interviews with five people in the room Biden “created an atmosphere of trust,” said JASON FURMAN , who later became chair of Obama’s CEA. “There was very little in the way of leaking and recrimination.” Cantor, an outspoken Obama critic, praised Biden’s handling of the talks at the time. “He would start every meeting by saying nothing is agreed upon until everything is agreed upon,” Cantor said in an interview last week, adding that Biden was “very straightforward.” That didn’t stop him from walking out of the negotiations when he discovered House Speaker JOHN BOEHNER was also talking directly with President BARACK OBAMA about a grand bargain that would include tax hikes and entitlement reforms — something Cantor said he learned from Biden. “To Biden’s credit, he was the one being transparent,” Cantor said. “I found out things from him I didn’t find out from my own side.” The standoff dragged on for more than a month before Obama and Boehner struck a last-minute deal to avoid default. “The vice president was a critical interlocutor with Senator [MITCH] McCONNELL in particular to try to keep that negotiation going,” said JACK LEW, Obama’s Office of Management and Budget director at the time. The situation is different this time around. Unlike in 2011, Democrats control both the House and the Senate and could in theory raise the debt limit unilaterally, though they’d need to use reconciliation if Senate Republicans filibustered to block them. But many of the players are the same. GENE SPERLING, one of the Obama administration officials in the room in 2011, is now a White house adviser. BRUCE REED, who led talks with Cantor’s aides as Biden’s chief of staff in 2011, is now Biden’s deputy chief of staff. And Cantor’s top aide who worked with Reed, NEIL BRADLEY, is now a top lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has urged lawmakers to raise the debt limit (though Bradley also criticized the Biden administration’s “runaway spending”). “When it comes to this summer’s debt limit, it is critical that lawmakers act responsibly and provide a timely increase in the limit,” Bradley said in a statement. “Failing to do so will endanger our economy and the full faith and credit of the United States.” Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you DALEEP SINGH? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. You can also reach Alex and Theo individually. | 
