From the Editor: Area congressman is key debt ceiling negotiator

Here’s one you can put under the old headline “local boy does good,” except that he only recently became local by federal decree, and we don’t know how much good he’s going to do yet.

He is U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, who since the post-2020 Census reapportionment has represented three precincts in and around Morgan City as part of his 6th Congressional District.

Redistricting put Graves in Morgan City. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy put Graves in the position where he now finds himself: a top Republican negotiator in the knock-down-drag-out over the federal debt ceiling, deep spending cuts and a potential federal default.

Apparently not one to brag, Graves (his staff, actually) has placed on his website, under the heading “news releases,” dispatches about the winner of the 2023 Congressional Art Competition, legislation to expand access to truck-driving as a career, and an effort to mint a commemorative coin to honor NASCAR’s 75th anniversary.

There’s nothing to remark on Graves’ role in the budget negotiations. There’s certainly nothing with a headline that says, “Dude! Who’s the man?”

We could almost forgive him if there was. He’s had quite the job.

The mess du jour has to do with the legal limit on federal borrowing: the debt ceiling. That ceiling at present is about $31 trillion, and we’ve hit it.

Some fancy juggling at the Treasury Department has pushed the drop-dead date back a few weeks. But officials quoted in the national media, including Treasury Secretary and former Fed Chair Janet Yellen, figure the plates start hitting the floor about June 1.

So there would be no more borrowing for our deficit-financed government. That could bring on all sorts of calamities, from a downgrading of U.S. debt by rating agencies to an empty mailbox when Grandma’s expecting her Social Security check.

House Republicans want a little something for going along with a debt ceiling hike. They want cuts in discretionary spending.

The GOP notes that spending and the debt have risen sharply in recent years. The federal debt was around $18 trillion when President Donald J. Trump took office. Now it’s over $31 trillion after all the federal spending during the COVID pandemic, not to mention the Trump tax cut, which Democrats would like to make part of the discussion.

The Democrats have forgotten the hard-learned lessons of the 1970s, Republicans say, and the result has been the highest inflation in the four decades since.

Democrats, meanwhile, tend to believe that the recovery from the Great Recession was slow and balky because Uncle Sam was too stingy. Besides, they say, the inflation rate is back below 5% and heading slowly down.

So that’s what Graves has been dealing with as a negotiator.

On May 16, it was Graves who was quoted in the national press as saying there are areas where agreement is possible, including changes in the energy production permitting process, a spending cap, reclaiming unspent funds set aside for COVID relief and work requirements for some federal aid programs.

On Friday, it was Graves who told reporters that negotiations were “on pause,” which he blamed on White House stubbornness.

Since then, McCarthy and President Joe Biden agreed to meet in person beginning Monday. Bringing in the expensive suits could mean that the situation is desperate. Or it could mean a deal is within reach, and the big names are coming in for the triumphant photo op.

Even when he was the public face of the negotiations, Graves hasn’t acted like a headline-grabber, something sure to go down well with McCarthy. An interview with
Graves was conspicuously absent from a weekend Washington Post story on his role in the budget deal.

The Post hauled out the ancient trope about work horses and show horses. Graves is, the newspaper said, decidedly a work horse with a reputation for mastering of policy details.

“Graves’s success in helping find consensus among Republicans to elect McCarthy speaker and corralling the disparate ideological factions of the conference during the
first several months of this year — a daunting task by any measure — is why McCarthy’s allies say Graves, 51, is the obvious pick to represent Republicans in ongoing negotiations with the White House,” said the Post.

Bill Decker is managing editor of the Morgan City Review.