We have moved into a new stage of the debt ceiling standoff between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden. This clock could now be ticking down faster than anyone expected. If Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is right, the United States could be facing a default on its obligations as soon as the first of June -- one month from today. Biden has been holding firm on his refusal to negotiate budget matters in exchange for McCarthy freeing the hostage of defaulting on the nation's debt, and McCarthy is likewise holding firm on his insistence that a clean debt ceiling hike bill will not pass the House and that negotiations are the only way forward. McCarthy has now managed to get a rather bare-bones plan passed through the House (with zero votes to spare), which is effectively the GOP's list of demands -- their ransom ask in the hostage-taking, in other words.

McCarthy had previously promised that Republicans were going to have passed their budget blueprint by now. This would be a big-picture summary of the budgets for each department of the federal government (without a whole lot of line-item detail beyond that). Later in the year, McCarthy's going to have to pass some sort of budget with all the numeric details filled in, but a blueprint would have at least given an overview of what the Republicans want to see in the next federal budget.

But McCarthy hasn't passed that. Instead he passed an even more generic overview which didn't put any actual numbers into the budget process -- beyond a few cherry-picked items that Republicans either want to zero out entirely or at the very least slash to the bone. By his failure to put out a budget blueprint, however, McCarthy is essentially in the same position he was in before he passed the debt ceiling plan last week. As things stand, Democrats are free to do the math themselves and come up with what McCarthy's sweeping generalities in the debt ceiling bill would actually mean to each and every part of the federal budget. Republicans will try to deny the most politically potent of these accusations, but they have no real leg to stand on, since they haven't managed to pass any actual budgetary numbers. Each and every GOP denial will be met with exactly the same response from Democrats: "OK, then what else are you going to cut even deeper, to get to your final numbers?"

The Democrats, from Biden on down, are already busy doing this. President Biden has been hammering the new GOP bare-bones document, the White House has put out very specific "this is what it will mean in each and every state" breakdown documents, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that the Senate Democrats will be holding various committee hearings (starting later this week) which will lay out in painful detail exactly what the Republicans are going to have to do to get to their target numbers. This is all to educate the public on precisely what McCarthy means when he talks about "cutting federal spending."

This is a basic truth of American politics -- it is easier to defend something in the abstract than it is to defend the real specifics of your plan. It's easier to talk about "getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse" (a perennial favorite for politicians to decry) than it is to explain that what this means in reality is a 20-percent-plus cut to things like the Border Patrol, air traffic control towers, meatpacking inspectors, railway safety inspectors, veterans' benefits, your local school district, and small businesses. Voters feel a little differently about "cutting the federal budget" in the abstract as they do when they learn it will mean fewer Pell grants available to college students in need, fewer preschool options available to parents, or that they're going to have to wait longer to get their income tax refund -- or sacrifices made to whatever other program directly affects them and their loved ones.

McCarthy doesn't want to admit any of these things, of course. He wants to get Joe Biden in a room, get him to agree to some sort of demands, and then Republicans will use all of it as political campaign fodder next year against him. That's pretty much always been their playbook in such situations. This is why Republicans never worry about either the debt ceiling or the deficit when a Republican is in the White House.

While this rhetorical battle plays out, the political pundits will be grading things on the "who blinked" scale. If we do somehow manage to avoid a default, there will have to be a face-saving compromise for both sides built into whatever is agreed to. McCarthy will have to be able to go to his caucus and say: "Well, we didn't get everything, but at least we got this" -- no matter what "this" turns out to be. Biden will have to be able to tell his fellow Democrats: "We got them to raise the debt ceiling without agreeing to their Draconian budget cuts -- we're just going to have a conversation about the budget later." McCarthy will have to be able to proclaim victory ("We got Biden to negotiate and cut a deal!"), while Biden will have to be able to do the same ("We didn't deal, just like we promised!"). That is a rather tricky tightrope for both sides to walk, obviously.

If this proves impossible, then there is only one other way to avoid disaster -- take things to the absolute brink and then pass something late at night right before the country defaults on its debt. This is a very real possibility. If this is the path we all take, it will happen with Schumer convincing 10 Republicans (give or take, depending on the two divas on the Democratic side) that this is the only way to solve the problem -- the Senate first passes some sort of "clean" debt ceiling hike bill and then the House will be forced to vote on it (McCarthy may force Democrats and worried moderate Republicans to use a "discharge petition" so he can later claim: "I didn't bring that bill to the floor! You can't blame me for what happened!"). With all Democrats and a handful of Republicans, the bill will pass the House in the wee hours of the day before the impending default. Biden will quickly sign it, and disaster will be averted. But the dangerous thing about this is that for it to work, the situation pretty much has to go down to the wire. Which could result (it did once before) in the United States having its credit rating downgraded. Which will (ironically enough) mean that our budget situation gets worse because of increased borrowing costs from that point on. All McCarthy and his radicals will have wound up doing is making the budget picture worse, not better -- the exact opposite of their stated goals.

This is likely -- no matter what eventually happens -- to get drawn out for at least the rest of this month. Democrats are already on the offensive (Schumer came up with a good bit of spin -- he's calling the bill McCarthy passed in the House the "Default on America Act"), and are already making their case for what this would all mean to ordinary Americans. To reach the goals the GOP laid out in their bill -- while not touching Social Security, Medicare, or the Pentagon budget -- means Republicans will have to make incredibly deep cuts to pretty much everything else the federal government does. They can juggle these between each other a bit, but not cutting one program or department means cutting all the rest of them even more. That's basic budget math, and it's not on McCarthy's side.

As I mentioned, the media is going to be completely focused on declaring one side or the other to have "blinked." The real budget talks are likely not going to take place until later in the summer, or perhaps right up to the October budgetary deadline. That's when the real wheeling and dealing will happen, even if McCarthy does get Biden to agree on some face-saving generality before the debt ceiling hostage is released. So we're all going to have to go through it all again even after whatever happens in the next month.

One thing Biden and Schumer and the rest of the Democrats should demand, though, is that whatever deal is reached that it push the debt ceiling danger point until after the 2024 election. Right now, McCarthy is only offering a one-year extension, which would mean we'd all have to go through all this hostage-taking again next year -- right in the middle of the presidential primaries. That seems like a recipe for disaster.

As for this year, the clock is ticking a lot faster than people expected (we still might not hit the actual debt ceiling until as late as September, but Yellen has put everyone on notice that it could indeed come quite soon). Something's going to have to happen this month. This will quite likely consume the political world and push everything else to the side (well, unless there is some big news from Donald Trump, perhaps). So we end today with a warning: Buckle up, everyone! We're in for a wild ride in May.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant