WWhen President Biden met with top congressional leaders in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Shalanda Young was there, picking up on signs of optimism.
Young leads Biden’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and is a key player in crafting spending deals with Congress. Biden has avoided government shutdowns so far during his presidency, a feat some attribute largely to Young, his top budget official known in Congress and the White House as a Republican whisperer.
But with Friday’s deadline looming and a deal still out of reach, many in Washington are bracing for the administration’s luck to run out. Late last week, Young asked agency heads to check and update plans to stop funding in case Congress doesn’t act before staggered deadlines that begin Friday.
Speaking after Tuesday’s meeting, Young was more optimistic.
“I felt like everyone was very optimistic that they could do this,” she says. “Now I’m worried about the clock.”
Young came to her current position as OMB director after more than 15 years of work on the House Appropriations Committee, where she earned a reputation as an honest broker in tough negotiations, as well as an approach charismatic and informal which has made some loyal. conservatives are his biggest fans.
“Even for a Democrat, she has this fantastic understanding of how House Republicans think and operate,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, a North Carolina Republican who worked closely with Young in June to achieve to the current spending agreement which helped avoid a payment default. the debt of the nation. During those negotiations last year, McHenry and Young bonded over balancing high-stakes jobs with their young children’s early morning arrival at daycare. “She knows the details of every account one can know in government, but more importantly, she understands what a deal looks like.”
That deal that Young helped broker in June is now coming home. The deal included a provision to cut all federal spending by 1 percent, if new spending bills are not passed by April 30. The deadlines for passing these spending bills are staggered, with the first round of funding due March 1. and the second expires on March 8. Congress kept negotiations going by passing “continuing resolutions” that maintain government funding at current levels but do not allow spending on new projects.
This agreement on debt limits also had significant political ramifications, which make current efforts to reach a deal on spending more difficult. In September, Trump, who has no official role in government beyond his powerful influence over the Republican Party, told House Republicans in a social media post that they had ‘lost big’ in the debt ceiling negotiations and asked them: “UNLESS YOU GET EVERYTHING. SHUT IT UP!” In October, a small group of Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy as speaker, in part out of frustration with the concessions he had made to Democrats on raising the debt ceiling.
McCarthy’s successor, President Mike Johnson, has at times been pessimistic about the prospects of a deal. After Tuesday’s meeting, Johnson told reporters he was working in “good faith” and “around the clock” to reach a deal on spending, but stressed that “the country’s first priority is our border and make sure it’s secure.”
“I believe the president can take executive power today to change this,” he added. (Biden disagrees and has asked Congress to fund more border patrol agents, asylum officers, and deportation flights, so people who don’t have a legal path to stay in the United States can be returned to their home countries more quickly. United)
Speaking in her office next to the White House last month, Young acknowledged that she had not had the opportunity to know Johnson well. A common bond between them — they are both from Louisiana — actually highlighted some differences in their origins, she noted. Johnson is from the northeast part of the state and Young grew up further south in the Baton Rouge area. When the two met recently and started talking about their home state, Young asked if Johnson ate crawfish. “I’ve had enough,” he said. Young teased him for his terse response.
Young loves crawfish so much that she ordered a huge shipment of it during the pandemic to share with other DC transplants from Louisiana. “It’s south Louisiana versus north Louisiana,” Young says. ” He has enough. I paid a lot of money to buy crawfish.
Although she has yet to break up with Johnson, Young’s office has several memorabilia of Republicans she befriended over the years. After a tough negotiation in the House, Young sent Rep. Jodey Arrington, chairman of the House Budget Committee and Republican of Texas, a belt buckle that read, “Jodey Don’t Play,” repeating a phrase he used during their meeting. On a shelf in his office is a note from Arrington that says: “I don’t like your budget, but I like you.”
Shutdowns are more than just public relations nightmares for lawmakers. They end up costing the federal government money and can hurt the economy. The last one, which began in December 2018 and lasted 35 days, was the longest shutdown in U.S. history and revolved around a standoff between President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats over spending linked to the construction of a border wall, which he ultimately did not obtain. The shutdown ended up reducing GDP by $3 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Most government shutdowns generally don’t last that long. Only four have lasted more than three days since 1981.
The current round of negotiations has been complicated by Biden’s push for more funding to support Ukraine’s war with Russia. Much of the Oval Office meeting focused on Biden, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries urging Johnson to stand up to Republicans in the House opposed to supporting Ukraine.
Young said she believed “the message was getting through” to everyone involved, even to the President, “who has a more complicated compass for navigating this matter.”
“Ukraine cannot wait, and we have a moral imperative and our own national security interests at the forefront of why this must be done,” she said. “The speaker must find a way to achieve this.”
With just days left to avoid a partial shutdown, the best-case scenario for Congress may be to pass a new resolution to keep government funding at current levels for a little longer. Young doesn’t believe the federal government will be faced with more interim spending for the rest of the year. This has a cost. For one, members of Congress would not be able to set new spending priorities that would help their home districts. But in the meantime, she’s optimistic the country won’t be mired in a partial government shutdown this weekend.
“Anything can happen,” she said. “We can get to the five-yard line and keep fumbling. I came to see everything. »
Republican McHenry is not as optimistic that his party will reach a bipartisan compromise without first conducting a shutdown. “At the end of the day, you have a group of Republicans who don’t want to participate in a government funding exercise,” McHenry said. “So I hope she’s right.”
