House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has finally made his opening bid, in the showdown with President Joe Biden (and the Democratic Senate) over raising the nation's debt ceiling. Today McCarthy released a proposal he thinks he will get 218 Republican votes and actually pass the House. It remains to be seen whether that's even true or not -- a vote won't be held until at least next week, and to say that not everyone in the GOP caucus is on board yet is an understatement. But at least he's finally put some numbers down on paper for all to see.

To be certain, this is still somewhat of a bare-bones effort. McCarthy and his fellow Republicans are attempting to tie the debt limit increase to the annual federal budget. But while President Joe Biden has released his full budget proposal (he did so weeks ago), McCarthy still has yet to even come up with an overview of the actual Republican budget. That would be a separate bill from what he introduced today, and then later a full budget bill (or bills; by regular order there should be 12 appropriations bills) would have to pass as well. While today's bid begins the process, the Republicans are still precisely nowhere on their actual budget itself, it bears pointing out.

Biden's position up until now has been a firm one: he is demanding a "clean" debt ceiling hike, with no conditions or strings tied to the budget (since the budget is an entirely separate process). Biden will negotiate with the Republican House, in other words, but only through the regular budget talks. The debt ceiling is so important that it must get done on time with no threat of a national default.

But back to what McCarthy did finally manage to release today. The entire thing is a big wish list, chock full of items to please portions of the Republican base (and donor class), few of which have any serious chance of being signed into law. A lot of these seem to be pure "poison pills" that neither Biden nor the Democratic Senate are ever going to agree to. These are designed to please either Republican voters or donors, but are so odious to Democrats they aren't ever going to see the light of day.

The first sticking point is going to be a very basic one. The McCarthy plan would only raise the debt ceiling for roughly one year. This means we'd find ourselves right back where we are now at this time next year, except we'd be smack dab in the middle of primary season. The White House is (quite obviously) going to object to that and push for raising the debt ceiling until at least after the 2024 general election in November. The Republicans want to come back and take another bite at this apple next year, while Democrats want to deal with it once and be done with it. It's hard to tell which side will prevail in this sticking point, at least so far.

The most sweeping item included is to roll back the 2024 budget to 2022 levels. This means all adjustments for inflation (during a very inflationary period) and all other increases in any federal program would be nullified. Here's what McCarthy has proposed:

The spending reductions would likely target federal health care, science, education, climate, energy, labor and research programs, while leaving untouched the Pentagon and services for veterans. But the bill does not specify the exact agencies or programs on the chopping block, leaving the task to lawmakers on congressional appropriations committees who craft spending bills that keep the government running and stave off a shutdown.

Republicans also proposed to cap any growth in federal agencies' future budgets at 1 percent, further hoping to save the government money.

This is a way for McCarthy to appear to be even-handed about the budget cuts, but without any specifics it could wind up meaning a whole lot of different things. This is an attempt to blunt criticism over the plan (more on Biden's criticism in a bit). These sorts of cuts will doubtlessly be haggled over in the budget negotiations between the House, the Senate, and the White House during budget season, but there is a lot of room for give-and-take here, so it's tough to predict if any of this will ever actually make it into a budget bill Biden signs. Some may, some may not -- that's about as close a prediction as can be made, at this point.

McCarthy also wants new work requirements on certain federal programs, such as food stamps (SNAP) or Medicaid. Which is all really part of the traditional GOP anti-welfare stance. Even more severe work requirements were proposed but didn't get the support of all Republicans and already wound up on the cutting room floor. This one will be fairly easy for Democrats to denounce:

The work requirements may save the government money, but they threaten to come at the cost of millions of families' financial well-being, according to some outside estimates. Analyzing an earlier, different version of the GOP proposal, the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities predicted more than 10 million people could be kicked out of the program, amounting to 1 in 4 current SNAP beneficiaries. In the case of Medicaid, GOP-led states have introduced similar work mandates in the past, only to see enrollment fall.

Next up on the chopping block in McCarthy's plan is Biden's plan to cancel student loan debt. Republicans would zero it all out. They may actually achieve this -- in court (a case is already being litigated) -- but it is highly doubtful Biden would ever agree to such a thing before the courts rule on it. So this one is not very likely to survive.

McCarthy would also attempt to "claw back" at least some of the $80 billion being sent to the Internal Revenue Service (from the Inflation Reduction Act), which is a gigantic bugaboo for Republicans, since they stand firmly for rich people being able to cheat on their taxes and get away with it. As you can see, the Democratic talking points really write themselves for this one, but the basic argument against it is even more fundamental than that: "Are you kidding me? You want to repeal this money? I thought you wanted to lower the deficit -- this money will more than pay for itself! If you repeal it, the deficit will go up!"

McCarthy would also repeal green energy programs and electric vehicle tax credits, because to Republicans "green" seems to equal "crazy hippie nonsense," and their only answer (as it has long been) is: drill, drill, drill! More oil, more coal, more natural gas... the planet will be more comfortable through climate change! For good measure, McCarthy also included language to ease the way for faster permitting for drilling.

This is all probably a non-starter with Democrats, although you never know. There's always "Mr. Coal," Senator Joe Manchin, so maybe they'll get some of it trimmed down -- but most likely during the budget process, not through the debt ceiling negotiations.

There are a whole bunch of small potatoes included in McCarthy's bill as well, including the usual Republican ideological claptrap, but there is one that could actually see the light of day: clawing back some unspent COVID aid. If the states or departments haven't spent their COVID emergency funds yet, then most of that money is simply never going to get spent, so why not move it back over to the Treasury's general fund? Some very worthwhile long-term investments still have unspent funds, but aid to states that never used it is admittedly just kind of sitting there. However, all of this is likely "less than $100 billion" which isn't exactly pocket change but also isn't going to lower the deficit in any appreciable way.

So that's McCarthy's opening bid, in a nutshell.

President Biden, on the other hand, gave a speech today in suburban Maryland where he ripped into the idea of holding the debt ceiling hostage and rolled out a few of his own talking points denouncing what the Republicans want to do:

But Mr. Biden seemed in no mood to negotiate. He lashed out at Mr. McCarthy and Republicans in a speech at a Maryland union hall that he was giving just as the House Republicans released their proposals.

The president accused the speaker and his party of seeking to slash spending in ways that will hurt Americans while protecting tax cuts for the country's wealthiest people. Mr. Biden denounced the bill in some of his most aggressive language yet, saying it would gut critical programs and hurt the most vulnerable.

"That would mean cutting the number of people who administer Social Security and Medicare, meaning longer wait times," he said. "Higher costs for child care, significantly higher -- preschool, colleges. Higher costs for housing, especially for older Americans, people with disabilities, families and children, veterans."

. . .

In his speech, Mr. Biden angrily demanded that Mr. McCarthy agree to an increase in the debt limit without conditions, and insisted that he will not negotiate about spending under the threat of the first default of America's financial obligations.

"They say they're going to default unless I agree to all these wacko notions they have," Mr. Biden said, repeatedly referring to Mr. McCarthy and his party as "MAGA Republicans." He said Mr. McCarthy's actions mean that Congress may fail to increase the debt limit in time to prevent a default.

"Let's be clear," Mr. Biden said. "If he fails, the American people will be devastated."

. . .

"MAGA officials are separately pushing for more tax giveaways and overwhelming benefits to the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations," Mr. Biden said. "Folks, this time the same old trickle down, dressed up MAGA clothing is worse than ever."

We can expect more of the same language both from Biden and from Democrats in Congress, as the issue begins to get more dire (as the deadline fast approaches).

But again, it is not even clear at this point if McCarthy can deliver the votes:

It was unclear whether Mr. McCarthy had yet secured the votes to pass the legislation. Republicans, plagued by internal divisions, have so far been unable to coalesce the conference around a full budget blueprint. And a small handful of hard-right Republicans, including Representatives Tim Burchett of Tennessee and Eric Burlison of Missouri, have balked at the prospect of raising the debt ceiling at all.

McCarthy can only afford four defections. But he can now pressure his own members by accurately stating: "If we can't even pass this, then I will have no leverage at all with Biden. I will be left empty-handed. This bill may not include everything you want and it may include things you don't want to vote on, but the alternative is to just admit to the American people that the Republican Party can't get its act together over anything. We'll have plenty of time to fine-tune things during the actual budget negotiations, so this shouldn't be seen as the final word, but you've just got to pass this now so we don't all look like buffoonish clowns and complete idiots."

That might be enough to convince the holdouts. This is all now moving on a fairly fast track, as McCarthy has stated that he wants to hold a floor vote on the package he just introduced some time next week. So there won't be a whole lot of time for debate about it within the Republican caucus. There was no immediate denouncement of the plan from any of the leaders of the various GOP factions, which is a good sign for McCarthy. They've got one week to all get on the same page, so the next step will be seeing whether that is even possible or not.

One thing seems clear, though. Joe Biden's not going to budge a single inch until some sort of plan does pass McCarthy's House. If at least five House Republicans torpedo McCarthy in a legislative "friendly fire" incident, then Biden's position is going to get a lot stronger. So why shouldn't he wait another week?

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant