US Congress Speaker Kevin McCarthy has won a small victory in this year's wrangling over government spending, a pundit says.
The House of Representatives passed a bill to raise the treasury debt ceiling from $1.1 trillion to $1.5 trillion on Thursday, after Republican McCarthy and Democrat President Joe Biden reached a last-minute deal on cutting federal spending in some discretionary areas.
The deal had been opposed by both hard-line Republicans, some of whom called for a vote of no confidence in McCarthy, and the left-wing fringe of the Democrat House minority.
It is expected to pass the Senate easily after Biden stated he wanted it on his desk for ratification as soon as possible.
Aquiles Larrea told Sputnik that the debt bill "went through as expected," adding that "McCarthy has solidified his position because nobody's calling for his leadership as of yet."
"He's going to have a small minority [that] was not happy with what happened," the wealth manager pointed out. "And you know what you're going to do with them. You're going to try to make them happy on some other initiative that happens."
The deal also shows Biden, suffering in the polls over economic problems and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, in a good light as well, he argued.
"Biden has shown his ability to make these deals happen with the other side," Larrea said.
"The question is, what will the Republicans do next in order to push some of their initiatives through and actually have the votes available?," he asked. Are they going to reach out to the other side or are they just going to continue doing it alone?"
Larrea cautioned those on either side of the partisan divide to cut their losses and accept the outcome, as the alternative would have been a government default on its loan repayments, public employees' wages and welfare checks.
"Let's be real: this was going to happen no matter what," Larrea stressed. "It was in nobody's best interest... that this deal doesn't get done. If not, it's political suicide for either either side."
"This fight is a loser," Larrea insisted. "You could have said, 'hey, we're going to stand our ground, we're not going to do anything at this particular point'. That's a losing proposition for the Republicans because they do have elections coming up and they want to be seen as 'hey, we're the party for everybody'."
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