So yesterday, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy put the House GOP debt ceiling offer on the table – “the plan” basics everyone’s been asking for.

…Amid this grim scene, Mr. McCarthy has a fair opening offer for President Biden. One: “Defaulting on our debt is not an option.” Two: House Republicans won’t pass an increase in the federal debt without reforms or spending restraint. “A no-strings-attached debt limit increase cannot pass,” he said, in a red line amid all the red ink.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to hear President Biden’s reaction to it, as the White House called lid on business at NINE IN THE MORNING YESTERDAY. Yes, a lid on a Monday MORNING. (Must have been one helluva vacation, no?)

It’s a shame POTATUS went to bed closed up shop before he had a chance to even see what was coming his way. Biden could have burped out a dismissive “You’ve got to be kidding me, man” or something equally profound. Played President for an extra 40 minutes or so.

Now, McCarthy will have his hands full, trying to pull together enough of his 218 players to pass the bill once they’ve put the final pieces together.

…The Speaker’s requests are hardly radical. Republicans want to return the federal government to the spending levels of the bad old days in . . . fiscal 2022. They then want to cap the growth of spending at 1% annually over 10 years for domestic discretionary accounts. These are reasonable limits after the spending sprees of recent years.

The negotiating weakness is that Mr. McCarthy didn’t distinguish between defense and social-welfare priorities, which suggests that defense could take a hit. A plurality of his caucus won’t abide cutting the Pentagon budget when China is building a menacing military and U.S. defense spending is only 3% of the economy, a historical low.

Biden is using the tried and true method of staying hidden in a basement while demonizing Republicans for hating the poor, protecting the wealthy, and never having “a plan.”

…The challenge for the Speaker is that President Biden refuses to negotiate and has refused even to talk since they last met 75 days ago. Mr. Biden wants to run out the clock until the debt limit is reached, then predict a cataclysm, and assume the GOP majority will panic and pass an increase without any reform. He knows most of Wall Street and the press will be on his side, never mind the financial merits.

His toadie leading the Senate, Chuck Shumer, is all in on the strategy in his usual winning fashion.

…Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday that the next step is for McCarthy to release his plan and show that it has the votes to pass through the House.

“Show us your plan,” Schumer told reporters. “What we got today was not a plan. It was a recycled pile of the same things he’s been saying for months.”

Here's the plan:

The House will vote on a bill to lift the debt ceiling into next year, save taxpayers trillions of dollars, make us less dependent on China, and curb high inflation—all without touching Social Security or Medicare. pic.twitter.com/yCE9WvFb0R

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) April 17, 2023

The White House followed up with the dog-eared, worn out and tired MAGA MAGA MAGA MARCIA MARCIA MARCIA trope that they seem to think resonates with someone.

…After McCarthy’s speech, White House spokesman Andrew Bates accused him of “breaking with the bipartisan norm he followed” during the Trump administration to extend the borrowing limit without “hostage-taking.”

McCarthy “again failed to clearly outline what House Republicans are proposing and will vote on, even as he referenced a vague, extreme MAGA wish list that will increase costs for hard-working families, take food assistance and health care away from millions of Americans, and yet would enlarge the deficit when combined with House Republican proposals for tax giveaways skewed to the super-rich, special interests, and profitable companies,” Bates said in a statement.

Give it a rest already, sad sacks. Your originality left the building years ago.

Biden wants a clean debt ceiling vote, and be done with it. There are a fair number of members of the House GOP who will flat-out not stand for that – a non-starter with McCarthy himself from the get-go. It’s a matter of finessing what the majority of members see as trimmable excesses into a package that can cause the entire caucus to coalesce for a positive vote, though whatever comes forth most likely faces doom in the Senate.

…The closed-door meeting kicks off a difficult push by GOP leaders to wrangle 218 votes for a proposal to raise the debt ceiling and reduce federal spending. McCarthy walked members through his proposal, which includes clawing back unspent Covid-19 funds, 10-year caps on spending, prohibiting Biden’s student loan forgiveness and enacting a GOP energy bill.

Conservatives are pushing for more to be included while some have said they won’t back a debt ceiling hike under any circumstances, illustrating how challenging it is going to be for GOP leaders to unite the conference behind a proposal.

…GOP Rep. Don Bacon said one of the things they are still debating is how – and how long – to raise the debt ceiling, and whether they should raise it by a dollar amount or to a date. Some members are pushing for a shorter increase, but Bacon said it will likely go into next year.

He also confirmed some members are still pushing to include more spending cuts and repeals, and some lawmakers advocated for that during the meeting, but Bacon predicted the 18 Republicans in Biden districts, like himself, will be for it.

Herding cats over what is considered in many quarters to be an artificially engendered game of chicken – more for drawn out political gamesmanship than instantaneous fiscal life or death.

…Default shouldn’t even be on the table because the debt ceiling is in many respects a fake cliff. More than enough revenue will continue to flow into the Treasury to pay interest on the debt and priorities like Social Security. The Treasury Secretary can prioritize those payments, and some legal observers say she has a legal obligation to do so under the 14th Amendment. Other parts of the government might operate at reduced capacity for a time, but that has happened before.

I do like that the Freedom Caucus is watching every step of the way, even though, yes, it snarls the works some.

…Republicans are trying to raise as much revenue as they can and cut spending in this bill.

It's Game Time.

Shrink Washington, Grow America.

Rep. Chip Roy—Texas Republican, former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz and a leading advocate of the House Freedom Caucus—is ready for a brawl over the nation’s debt ceiling https://t.co/H4Qj4DwuJY

— Chip Roy (@chiproytx) April 17, 2023

I don’t see a problem with scraping revenue free from other sources, clawing back unspent dollars, or paying attention to where the dollars are going, to begin with. Neither do I have a problem with work requirements for public assistance, which is one of the proposals beginning to fire up the Left outrage machine.

What if anything will roust POTATUS from his lair for another meeting, if any? That sure looks hard to say if he doesn’t even come to work.

I figure the rhetoric’s gonna get fugly between the warring parties in a week or two – maybe even within the GOP itself, and that will determine whether the White House opens a door.