Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have come to a deal on the debt ceiling negotiations.
The news is that they intend to lift the debt ceiling and apply new caps on spending.
The proposal still faces tall barriers to passage, particularly in the House, where conservatives wasted no time hammering the compromise as a capitulation by McCarthy to Biden - one they say has undermined the deficit reduction goals of Republicans going into the talks.
The conservatives are pointing to one major point of contention: The debt ceiling hike in their legislation was capped at $1.5 trillion, while the deal McCarthy cut with Biden was expected to be nearly three times that figure.
Rep. Dan Bishop took the criticisms a long step further, saying a debt ceiling increase of that size would prompt "War" between conservatives and leadership.
"If [the] Speaker's negotiators bring back in substance a clean debt limit increase one so large that it even protects Biden from the issue in the presidential , it's war," Bishop tweeted.
Despite the conservative criticisms, Republicans clearly won the debate in one important sense: Unlike debt ceiling fights in the past - when GOP leaders demanded spending cuts but conceded tax hikes to Democrats in return - McCarthy drew a red line on new revenues early in the process, focusing the deficit reduction effort squarely on only the spending side of the budget equation in what amounts to a major victory for Republicans.
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