On today’s episode of the 5 Things podcast: What’s in the debt ceiling deal
USA TODAY White House Correspondent Joey Garrison has the latest after a weekend agreement. Plus, USA TODAY World Affairs Correspondent Kim Hjelmgaard puts Turkey’s presidential election in context, the government is working to offset January 6 rioters’ donation money, Police investigate bomb threats at Target stores, State Farm will no longer insure new homes in California because of wildfire risks. Here’s how to honor veterans this Memorial Day.
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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I’m Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Monday, the 29th of May 2023. Today, a deal on the debt ceiling. Plus, what Turkey’s runoff election means for the world, and the government works to offset donations for January 6th rioters.
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Just days before a potential default, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached a deal late Saturday to raise the debt ceiling. That’s an exchange for caps on future spending and other demands from Republicans. I spoke with USA TODAY White House Correspondent Joey Garrison for the latest. Howdy, Joey.
Joey Garrison:
Hey, how are you doing?
Taylor Wilson:
Good. Thanks for hopping back on the show. So Joey, what’s in this deal, and what didn’t make the cut?
Joey Garrison:
So what this deal does, first of all, and most importantly for President Biden, is it raises the debt ceiling, extends it through the end of 2024. So that essentially takes it past the next election. The next time a president and Congress have to take this up will be in 2025. In turn, what Republicans get out of this is they’ve been pushing for spending caps for the next 10 years, then they brought it back down to six years. Ultimately, it’s going to be spending caps for the next two years, which is something the White House supported. So that was a middle ground, they met there.
In addition, there are expanded work requirements that Republicans wanted for food stamps and other federal benefits. It claws back some of the IRS funding that was approved last year in the Inflation Reduction Act. It takes out 10 billion of 80 billion that was approved to ramp up enforcement of tax cheats, really wealthy Americans and corporations that are able to evade taxes. That’s been a real big talking point for Republicans, and they were able to get a little bit rolled back on that. It also rescinds some unspent COVID-19 rescue dollars.
What it doesn’t do is President Biden, especially towards the end, had been saying hey, if we’re going to have spending cuts, we ought to also look at revenue. And particularly by taking out tax loopholes that corporations utilize as well as rolling back Trump’s tax cuts that favored the wealthy and corporations. That, however, didn’t make it into the package. That’s a win for Republicans. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and student loan forgiveness plans, those are both left in. The Republicans had targeted those, but this bill does not address.
Taylor Wilson:
Joey, these negotiations have been inching along for weeks. You’ve obviously been on the show talking a lot about it. What was the final move that got this thing over the hump?
Joey Garrison:
Well, I think just recognition. I mean, Speaker McCarthy knows that you have to raise the debt ceiling here. And then some of the Republican caucus have been pretty outspoken that they don’t think that Congress really needs to raise the debt ceiling, but I think Speaker McCarthy knows that that could lead to an economic catastrophe. Ultimately, I think he wanted to avoid that. And the last thing that they were really debating on towards Saturday evening was the work requirements with food stamps and other federal aid. I would say they met some middle ground on this as well. In fact, it’s actually going to expand food stamp coverage through the SNAP program for homeless individuals as well as veterans. So I think that’s a way that the White House and Democrats can stomach the stricter work requirements on that.
So I think getting that done, and then as well as really finding something that Democrats could tolerate when it came to spending caps, what this really does is, so next year in 2024, it keeps it flat, the spending level. This is non-defense funding. The other domestic programs – whether it’s education, nutrition programs, other things, there’s hundreds of federal programs – keeps it flat from last year and then normally a 1% increase in 2025. After that, there are targeted appropriation spending levels in this bill, but those aren’t enforceable. So I think just finding something that McCarthy was able to bring back to his base and say that hey, this is unprecedented spending caps that we’re having in a budget here, but then something that wasn’t as far-reaching as they originally proposed.
Taylor Wilson:
The deal still needs approval in Congress. How smoothly do we expect that to go next?
Joey Garrison:
From both sides there’s people upset with this, particularly on the far right of the Republican Party in the House Freedom Caucus. You have about 45 members part of that caucus. Several of them have been outspoken. First of all, they didn’t want to raise the debt ceiling anyways. They look at that as something that kind of acknowledges that we have a debt problem in this country, according to them, and so they didn’t really want that anyways. They don’t see enough cuts that they sought. Some even wanted border control measures, other things that didn’t make it into the legislation. So several of them were outspoken.
Now, Speaker McCarthy and other Republican leadership said hey, yeah, those are some of the real colorful personalities in the Republican Party. They don’t represent the entire caucus. The other bit of resistance is from the Progressive Caucus among Democrats who… They think the President Biden caved on too many concessions to Republicans here and don’t appreciate the way the Republicans went about this anyways. I think ultimately a lot of the Democrats are going to get behind it, even from the Progressive Caucus, and I think it’ll probably pass, but that’s just a prediction on my end.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. USA TODAY White House Correspondent Joey Garrison, thanks as always.
Joey Garrison:
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Okay. Thanks, Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
The leader of Turkey, Recep Erdoğan, has won a presidential runoff, a victory that brings his rule into a third decade. For more on what that means for Turkey and the world going forward, I spoke with USA TODAY World Affairs Correspondent Kim Hjelmgaard. Welcome back to 5 Things, Kim.
Kim Hjelmgaard:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Kim, how did this election play out?
Kim Hjelmgaard:
This is the second round, a presidential runoff, if you like. A couple of weeks ago, Erdoğan and his main challenger came really close, but neither candidate got the 50% required to avoid this runoff. That first run was closer than people were expecting. Erdoğan has been in power for 20 odd years, and over that time has really tightened his grip on many different parts of the Turkish government, the media and so on. So everything was kind of in his favor. Nevertheless, this second round, it was still close-ish, but Erdoğan received about 52% of the vote, and that’s put to bed any idea that Turkey was going to get a new leader.
Taylor Wilson:
Kim, can you go into some of the major issues that voters were focused on?
Kim Hjelmgaard:
I’d break that down like this. I mean, domestically for Turkey, I mean all politics is local. For Turkish voters this is about the economy. This is about Erdoğan’s reaction to a couple of earthquakes earlier this year that killed 50,000 people. This is about the overall direction that Turkey has been going over the two decades that he’s been in power. President Erdoğan has put religion, Islam, at the center of the political system there in a way that is different and it’s not how Turkey was founded. He’s also consolidated a lot of his power. He controls parliament, he controls the state media. He has jailed a ton of journalists. He has removed all the obstacles to his agenda, and I think it’s fair to say that it is an illiberal agenda and he is an authoritarian leader.
Taylor Wilson:
Why does this election matter outside of Turkey’s borders?
Kim Hjelmgaard:
Turkey sits in quite a strategic area geographically. A lot of people may know that it straddles Europe and Asia. But it shares a border with Syria. It is close to Iran. It sits at this nucleus near the Middle East. That’s the historical explanation. Over the last 17, 18 months since the start of the war in Ukraine, it’s become important for a different reason, which is that Turkey has had pretty strong relations with Russia. It set itself up as a potential peace broker between Russia and Ukraine. That hasn’t quite happened yet, but it’s also brokered a grain deal that’s allowed Ukraine to export a lot of its foodstuffs. Ukraine is one of the largest supplier of foodstuff and grains to Africa and other places around the world. And Turkey, as a NATO member, have taken quite a firm line against Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Erdoğan has played both sides, and so I think there was not quite an expectation but a hope that a new leader in Turkey at this particular moment in time could mean something different for the dynamic between Russia and Ukraine and other NATO members.
Taylor Wilson:
USA TODAY World Affairs Correspondent Kim Hjelmgaard. Thanks so much.
Kim Hjelmgaard:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
The government is increasingly working to prevent January 6th rioters from being able to profit in the attack on the US Capitol. Many have brought in thousands of dollars in donations as they’ve been prosecuted for their roles in the insurrection. But an Associated Press review of court records found that prosecutors in the more than 1,000 criminal cases tied to January 6th are increasingly asking judges to impose fines on top of prison sentences to offset the donations. January 6th rioter fundraising success might indicate that there are still many who view that date as a patriotic piece of history. And some still baselessly believe that Democrats stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump. The former president himself has spread that idea and pledged to pardon rioters if elected.
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Police are investigating bomb threats made against Target stores in three states. That’s after they were alerted by local media outlets in Utah, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that received emails referencing the retail chain’s decision to remove or relocate LGBTQ collections celebrating Pride Month. Cleveland 19 News reported that one emailed threat read, “Target is full of cowards who turned their back on the LGBT community and decided to cater to the homophobic right wing redneck bigots who protested and vandalized their store.” Target has been hit with a conservative backlash for merchandise it carries to promote Pride Month. Some even attacked LGBTQ Pride displays and confronted employees in Target stores. The company then held emergency meetings and decided to remove or relocate some Pride merchandise to be less visible in stores. That move has now drawn criticisms from many on the left. Meanwhile, hundreds of bills targeting LGBTQ Americans, particularly transgender people, have been introduced in state houses across the country.
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State Farm will no longer provide home insurance to new California customers because of the risk of wildfires and an increase in construction costs. The largest fire in California last year, the Mosquito Fire, covered over 100 square miles and put more than 9,000 structures at risk. It ultimately destroyed more than 70 of them. Earlier this year, federal officials announced nearly $200 million in grants to help communities nationwide become more resilient to wildfires. Of that money, California received around 79 million. For its part, State Farm said it will continue to serve existing California customers.
Today is Memorial Day. It’s often considered to be the unofficial start to summer, but its meaning, of course, goes much, much deeper. It’s a time to honor the people who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces, making the ultimate sacrifice. We’ll post a link in today’s show notes about meaningful ways to honor veterans who have passed. And you can go back and listen to Friday’s episode about a powerful flag ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery held last week.
Thanks for listening to 5 Things. If you like the show, please subscribe and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And if you have any comments, you can reach us at podcasts@usatoday.com. I’m back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.
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