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With the risk of default still looming, Democratic and Republican leaders are racing to pass the debt ceiling deal agreed to over Memorial Day weekend. President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy expressed confidence that they’ll find the votes before June 5, when the U.S. is expected to run out of money to pay all its bills.
Republicans brought the U.S. to the brink of default over their concerns that federal spending and the resulting national debt are too high. So, as lawmakers continue to work out the finer details of the deal, how did the GOP do?
Not very well, if you ask Raymond Scheppach, a former official at the Congressional Budget Office who’s now a professor of public policy at the University of Virginia.
The deal “does hardly anything to address America’s long-term debt problem,” he writes, “which to me shows why a debt ceiling standoff is not the right way to solve it.”
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has billed the deal as a victory for his party.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Raymond Scheppach, University of Virginia
The White House and House Republicans agreed to a deal just days before the US is expected to default – but they still have to get it approved by Congress.
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Science + Technology
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Anjana Susarla, Michigan State University
Figuring out how to regulate AI is a difficult challenge, and that’s even before tackling the problem of the small number of big companies that control the technology.
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Raven Garvey, University of Michigan
If hunter-gatherers went beyond nose-to-tail eating to include the undigested plant matter in a prey animal’s stomach, assumptions about gendered division of labor start to fall apart.
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John Michael Streicher, University of Arizona
Unlike opioid drugs like morphine and fentanyl that travel throughout the body, the opioids your body produces are released in small quantities to specific locations.
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Politics + Society
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Armin Langer, University of Florida
Born out of the pain and anger in Black American communities, rap music struck a similar chord throughout Europe, as immigrants struggle to retain their ethnic identities on the margins of society.
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Ahmet T. Kuru, San Diego State University
Long-term Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was reelected with 52% of the vote. Will he push the country further down an autocratic, anti-West path?
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Education
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Pawan Dhingra, Amherst College
The road to becoming a champion speller is made easier with support from family and friends, but ultimately it depends on an individual student’s commitment to learning, a scholar writes.
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Arts + Culture
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Jess Reia, University of Virginia
Nighttime is much more than a source of danger or an occasion to party – it’s a portal into a different world, with rhythms, challenges and lifestyles of its own.
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Economy + Business
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Monica Lea, University of Nebraska Omaha
The person with the most YouTube followers calls himself ‘YouTube’s biggest philanthropist.’
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