laura: debt ceiling stalemate, and biden makes it official. >> we made a bill, we sent it to the senate. we have done our job. lauren -- laura: kevin mcrthy carries a notable win, successfully passing his debt package, but democrats reject the bill, and the stomata over the nation's debt ceiling is unclear. plus president biden makes it official, announcing his 2024 reelection bid. >> were going to beat him in the ballot box, and we are going to settle our unfinished business. laura: and former president trump, the current front runner

for the republican nomination, goes on the attack next. >> this is "washington week or, -- week." corporate funding is provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular's goal has been to provide wireless service that helps people communicate and connect. our customer service team can help find a plan that fits you. >> additional funding is provided by the ewing foundation, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, robert and susan rosenbaum, the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. laura: good evening and welcome to "washington week."

i'm laura baran lopez. president biden and house speaker mccarthy are locked in a high-speed -- high stakes standoff over the debt ceiling with weeks to go until the federal government is unable to pay its bills. the men have challenged each other for months as the deadline draws near with the president calling for a clean increased to the debt limit and a separate gop budget plan while speaker mccarthy has called on president biden to negotiate now over spending cuts. on wednesday, mccarthy notched a symbolic win when his debt ceiling and spending cuts bill passed in the house, albeit a long party lines and by two votes. a boy it mccarthy spoke to reporters -- big -- a bouyant mccarthy. >> the president can no longer ignore and not negotiate. laura: republicans hope the bill's passing will increase pressure on the president to meet with the speaker, but senate democrats made clear

speaker mccarthy's bill is dead on arrival in the upper chamber and when asked by reporters if he would negotiate with mccarthy over the debt limit, president biden did not budge. >> having a meeting with leader mccarthy but not on if the debt limit gets extended. that is not negotiable. laura: joining us to discuss this and more, the chief correspondent at the washington post, john bresnahan, mario parker, the white house and politics editor for bloomberg news, and melanie zanona, capitol hill reporter for cnn. thank you for being here. i think it is important first to establish the stakes for this convertion. if the country defaults on its debt, here is what would happen -- we would quickly lose about one million jobs. there's a possibility of a recession. the credit rating for the country tanks, which would be followed by increasing interest rates, likely cuts to medicare

and social security benefits, and military paychecks delayed. that's not everything that would happen. that's a number of the possible catastrophic things that would. republicans made clear with this bill that they are not going to agree to a clean debt limit increase. they want spending cuts, but this bill does not specify the spending cuts that they really want. is this a serious proposal to balance the budget? >> it is and it is not. it is both at the same time because they are calling for pretty dramatic spending cuts. they want to return spending to the fiscal year 2022 level, two years ago, $130 billion less than the government is spending now, so it is a pretty dramatic cut, and they don't want to cut the pentagon, and they don't want to cut veteran spending, they say, so they are going to cut everything else that is "nondefense discretionary." the interior department, commerce department, labor department. to get to where they want, they

are going to have to have huge cuts to those agencies. it's never going to happen. this is what they are calling for. this is what their opening position is in this debate, and they want to force biden to try to talk on their ground where they are talking about spending cuts, caps, cuts. they don't want to talk about spending more money or raising taxes. they want to talk about cutting spending in as dramatic a way as they can. laura: if they actually even achieve it, there are economists that say those csut recession, i want to ask you about the white house because right now, the president is not changing his tune. what are you hearing about how they will respond to this deal? mario: the pressure is starting to build on the white house they thought they had the upper hand, particularly through the lens of what we saw in january, the number of votes they needed, the number of times they had to vote in order for speaker mccarthy to get the gavel.

the gambit is starting to backfire slightly on the white house. we are seeing the u.s. chamber of commerce come out and urged biden to meet with mccarthy. you are seeing a little bit of lackluster response. you are seeing the business roundtable apply pressure also, and don't forget, president biden's talking point prior to the passage of the bill in the house had been show me something, they don' have anything. now they do, so now the onus is on the president to at least start to open up to speaking with mccarthy,es extremist in the situation. laura: say top congressional leaders, mccarthy included, reach a deal with president biden, it's going to be nothing like what was just past, to john's point. can kevin mccarthy get all his republicans to support a deal with democrats? >> that is the big question, and he's going to have to get those

republicans on board. he needs them for his speakership because they have made clear, the right flank, that they do not want anything water down in their opinions of what they already past. they have this tool known as the motion vacate, which essentially forces a vote to oust the tting speaker, and they are threatening to use that if they don't get what they want. that is hanging over mccarthy's head, and that is what makes it so challenging. i cannot even imagine what this deal would look like, to be honest, that democrats and republicans good support and that they could actually pass. they are starting to think about what that would look like. right now, it is hall enough to -- it was hard enough to get even his conservative wish list past through the house. >> based on what you know about mccarthy's leadership style, do you think he is interested in a deal with democrats? >> i actually do. i think he actually wants to get

this done. he does not want to default on his hands, either. he recognizes the stakes as well . no one really knows how it will shake out. i do think they want a solution, but he's very cognizant of these different competing dynamics he has to deal with. laura: you have said you think passage of this gop bill could escalate the possibility that we could potentially get closer to the fiscal cliff. why do you think that is? dan: i think the sides are both so far apart and are both done in on their respective positions, and i think that we are going to get closer and closer to the brink before there is some movement toward negotiation. i think inevitably, president biden will get drawn into this. i don't quite know when and how it will happen. i have no idea what the deal will be. we have to remember, in 2011, we went through a similar process with a president who was starting his reelection

campaign, barack obama, and in that case, the vice president, joe biden, did a lot of negotiating on both raising the debt ceiling and cutting spending. he was there at the beginning of those negotiations and when they blew up and i had to cut a very messy deal in the end, he was there to help bring that together. so he has been through this. there is something at stake for him in this that i think relates to his 2024 reelection campaign, which is this is an early moment of definition for him and the republican party, and if he plays this smartly and well, he comes out perhaps stronger, but if this thing blows up and the economy tanks, that is going to help -- that is going to hurt him as well as the publicans, so it behooves him to think about if there is a way to get negotiations that can produce a deal, but this is a more challenging republican party to negotiate with than even that people already party of 2011, as john well knows.

laura: you think there is risk for both republicans as well as president biden? dan: oh, yes. laura: you punch bowl talk to senate majority leader chuck schumer about what past through the house by kevin mccarthy, and he thinks this bill could potentially be heading the country towards a default as well, so is he standing by president biden? is he standing by the position that the white households that you don't negotiate with republicans on this? mario: absolutely. i think he'll democrats are even harsher on this than the white house. i talked to people in the west wing, and they are like maybe we can get to the table if mccarthy passes this bill when they were trying to put it together, and now, they were talking about, you know, they are under pressure from jeffries and schumer not at this moment to negotiate. i do think it is fascinating,

though. democrats and we were talking about this before, in the last day, i have gotten two senate democrats to call me and ask, what is -- what does mccarthy really want? they are not talking to each other. your four months into this congress, and they are still kind of resistant -- we are four months into this congress. it's amazing to me that there is so little discussion, and we could be hitting this default day, the exit date, they call it, in a couple weeks. could be june, could be july. we don't actually know yet, but it is fascinating they don't have a read on him at all, really, what does he have to have to make a deal, and i think that is a huge problem. beyond that, they have no idea what is happening. they really don't. a lot of these members are new. they have not dealt with him before. biden does not know them,

mccarthy does not know them, schumer does not know them. we could blunder our way into a worse situation than 2011 very easily. they could just keep talking past each other and we could find ourselves on the verge of default. laura: as mario said, the white house is facing more pressure potentially to come to the table. are you hearing any additional pressure coming from democrats now towards the white house to negotiate? >> there's some moderate democrats. joe manchin has been very vocal about this. i do think they will -- you know , the house is out for a week. i think they will go back home and start to hear more from folks on main street. this is starting to percolate a little bit into main street. it had not really yet. i think wall street has started to really pay attention. you are seeing insurance on a possible default going up, the cost of that going up, so i think people are starting to pay attention to it because, really,

they -- i mean, we are four months into this congress, and there has been very little movement until this week, until this vote. finally, there is something, but both sides are both kind of staring at each other. mario: to john's point, this is starting to emanate outside of washington. the are watching the politics of it, but when you start talking about things like delayed social security payments, medicaid, medicare beneficiaries, higher interest rates just on your mortgage or car loans, those are the type of things that get constituents calling their representatives, and you don't want those calls if you are a representative. >> and the economy is in a fragile spot, right? it is not as though this is a robust economy that could take a bit of a shock. there's so much nervousness. what we saw with the banking industry, jobs market looks strong still, but in all other ways, if we got the kind of jolt

that we are talking about or even come close, it will set off some real concerns. laura: you mentioned 2011 and us reaching the fiscal cliff there. do you think this is a 2011-level scenario? >> i think it could be worse. partly what you have been talking about, which is there is no communication and no understanding. the only thing i can think of, and you all might have a better sense of this than i do, is that the relationship between the president and mitch mcconnell may be a back-doorway into something, but i think we are a ways away from that. i think there's a lot of brinkmanship yet to happen. >> you mentioned the possibility of democrats providing votes in the house to get past this. do you have any sense of if minority leader hakeem jeffries is actually going to want to do this?

melanie: as of today, they are holding their position that there will be no negotiations and just a clean debt ceiling height, but i think the closer we get to that x date, we might start to see some movement. >> i just want to ask again, i mean, the stakes of this, is there any sense that lawmakers really are feeling it, feeling how close we could come to the brink? john: i don't know. mel and i talk to these guys all the time. there's a large part of the house republican conference that does not believe default is a real crisis, that we could pay our interest on the debt. we could make enough payments to keep -- the default is not real, it is a funny thing, and i think it's extruded early dangerous. you said 2011. in 2011, john boehner was the speaker, and he at least had a relationship with biden. he knew not so much president obama at that point, but he knew

biden. the debt was smaller and we are talking about. banner -- boehner had been talking to the tea party guys, and he is telling a reporter he cannot talk to these guys. i think it is worse now. mccarthy barely survived by the skin of his teeth, and at that point, john boehner was sti viable. mccarthy barely got there. i do think he wants to govern appropriately, but can he survive this? i'm not entirely sure. laura: for all the reasons we outlined, we hope that we don't go over the fiscal cliff, but we want to turn to 2020 for now. president biden officially announced this week he is running for a second term, setting the stage for a possible 2024 rematch against his predecessor, donald trump.

president biden: the question we are facing as if in the years ahead, we have more freedom or less freedom, more rights or fewer. laura: trump, the current front runner for the gop presidential nomination, responded in his own video. >> when i stand on that debate stage and compare our records, it will be radical democrats' worst nightmare. laura: president trump went on to also say in that video again that the election was rigged, that it was stolen. those lies, plus the efforts by republicans in a number of states to restrict abortion, lgbtq rights, to ban books, is a big part of why president biden focused his reelection launch on freedom -- what they describe as freedom. is this a new message from the president? >> this is a continuation. i think when we hear the president say finish the job, he means the job he outlined in 2020 when he said he was

galvanized by what happened in charlottesville. if you look at the ticket, he reads the tea leaves from his 2024 ad. we don't see the traditional hardhats and construction workers or american flag until almost two minutes into that video. what we see is january 6. we hear 30 seconds in him invoke maga, and him linking that to voting rights, to abortion rights, all of those different things as well, so he is almost downright giddy at the prospect of having a rematch with former president trump. laura: in addition to the president's launch video, the democratic national committee as well as some other democratic super pac's are heavily focused on abortion and guns, but what stands out to you about the way the president is shaping the argument for his second term? john: i agree with mario. i was struck the fact that the parallelism of the opening of the 2020 video and the opening

of 2024, charlottesville and january 6, and then ape asked pivot to the abortion issue in particular, which said to me he is running a combination of what he did in 2020, which is a focus on president trump and the threat that trump has done to the country and the threats to democracy in particular, and an thing that up because of january 6 and the election did nihilism -- camping -- amping that up because of january 6 and the election did nihilism, and at the same time, what they did in 2022, which was to focus on abortion and drugs -- abortion and guns, to bring democrats out. he wants this to be not a referendum on him. he wants it to be a choice, and in donald trump, he has the ideal foil to be able to make a choice and not a referendum. laura: donald trump is still the

front runner in this race in the gop primary, despite the fact that these investigations are looming in particular, his former vice president testified on thursday for hours before a federal grand jury about the president's potential efforts to overturn strict attorney in fulton county in georgia said she will decide on charging the former president in their investigation in the election results in georgia. are any of his challengers seizing on this? >> i mean, they -- look, right now -- and he has been indicted in new york on 34 felony counts. i do think they are not directly seizing on it, but i do -- they are clearly intimating that he's got problems and he's got more baggage than any president in history and is running again. are kind of echoing a little bit

what you see biden saying. the message of trump is in a lot of ways, he will go back -- he only remembers the first three years of his presidency. he does not remember the last year. he never talks about that. the pandemic does not exist in his mind. in the biden message subtly, to me, is chaos, that trump was chas, and i think we see that. desantis is presenting in particular the image of competency. "i got through the chaos in a competent way. i managed florida in a competent way." tim scott has this upbeat approach. asa hutchinson and nikki haley have different approaches. i do think they are trying to come at it indirectly. i don't think they can say really -- i don't think you will see desantis at this point or anybody say, look, you know, he could be in prison. i don'think he is going to say that, but it is his problem, let

him clean it up. laura: ron desantis so far has not been forcefully going after him, but speaking of desantis, he signed a six-week abortion ban in florida. you have covered gop efforts to restrict abortion. do publicans in congress think -- do republicans in congress think abortion is a hot potato? melanie: i think so. when i asked republicans about abortion, they were running away from you. they passed a federal abortion ban, a 20-week federal abortion ban, and me and my colleagues did some digging, and found i have no inntion of putting an abortion ban on the floor. it's because they recognize this was such a liability for them in

the midterms, and they would much rather try to stick their heads in the sand and try to ignore it, but when you let the states be in the driver seat, you will have states like florida. you will have these supreme court rulings that are out of their hands, and they will be forced to answer for the results of those. there is debate internally in the gop right now. do we continue to ignore this or can we address it? can we lean into this somehow in a way that can politically benefit? they just have not decided what that message will be. laura: sticking with desantis, he appears to be jumping in relatively soon to the race, but he is facing a lawsuit from disney for using his state power essentially to go after a company for disagreeing with him on the don't y gay bill. it is not just democrats criticizing desantis, though, is it? >> not at all. this disney battle has turned into quite an ordeal for him. he fired the first shots in this a year ago when disney took issue with the don't say gay bill, and i think he thought he

had the upper hand, and he was handsomely rewarded with a big reelection victory, and i think he came out of that thinking that heas doing the right thing and that people were rewarding him for it, but disney is playing a long game and they have been in florida a long time and they will be in florida long after ron desantis is governor. this has become a problem for him rather than a pure asset. he has to deal with this, and i think there are republicans and others who see this as a misuse of kind of conservative values and strategies. the idea that you are using government to go after the private sector kind of turns historic conservatism on its head and is beginning to have some of that backlash. he is potentially losing a war with disney over the particulars, and he's getting criticism from other conservatives about the strategy. so this is one more piece of evidence that he is finding his

footing and sometimes not fining itery successfully as he makes the transition from being a successful statewide candidate to the national stage. >> like you said, turning conservatism on its head and using government in a very different form than it has been used previously, but i think that we got to leave it there. i know we can continue going on about the 2024 field and how it is taking shape. thanks to all of our panelists for joining us and sharing your reporting, and thanks to all of you for watching at home. be sure to tune in saturday for a look at the teacher shortage in rural america and efforts to overcome it in montana. good night from washington. >> corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> for 25 years, consumer cellular has been offering no contract wireless plans designed to help people do more of what they like. our u.s.-customer service team can help find a plan that fits

you. for more, visit consumercellular.tv. >> additional funding is provided by the yuan foundation, committed to bridging cultural diffences in our communities. sandra and carl delay-magnuson, rose bushel and andy shreeves, robert and susan rosenbaum, the corporation for public broadcasting, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪

announcer: major funding for "tell me more with kelly corrigan" is provided by karen and tom mulvaney and the barlow family foundation. ♪ the theory of representation is that if you can see it, you can be it, but representation might also be a way to occasionally signal inclusion without changing the power structure at all. either way, we don't spend much time talking about who's doing the representing and how it feels on their shoulders. constance wu is almost always introduced as an asian-american actress, which is true, and a source of pride, and also a lot of pressure to put on one person to represent a billion-plus people