Debt ceiling deal a win for Biden, but he may struggle to capitalize on it: Bidenomics

President Biden appears to be one of the winners of the fight over raising the debt ceiling. But he may not be able to capitalize on it. Yahoo Finance senior columnist Rick Newman explains in this week's Bidenomics.

Video Transcript

- All right, well, the debt ceiling crisis has been averted. The Senate passing legislation to suspend the debt limit by a 63 to 36 vote, late last night. Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman looking into this, figuring out what this all means for President Biden. And Rick, you say it's a big win. He's coming out of the week in pretty good shape.

RICK NEWMAN: Well, I think the best news is we don't have to devote any more airtime to it here at Yahoo Finance, yay. I think we're all celebrating that. It's a relief for markets, obviously. We're seeing that the last couple of days. I think this, unequivocally, is a win for President Biden. He said-- all along, he said, I'm confident we're going to reach a deal, don't worry about it. And that's exactly what happened.

Now if you want to get into the weeds, which some of the political geeks want to do, Biden did change his story a little bit. He said at the beginning, he was not going to make any concessions in order to get the debt ceiling raised, and then he did make some concessions. But I don't think anybody really cares much about that. There are modest spending cuts at best, some of them may not even happen.

And now we have the debt ceiling raised all the way to the beginning of 2025, so we will not have to deal with that during a presidential election. And then it depends, obviously, on who wins in '24, to see what happens with the debt ceiling the next time around. But we got through it.

And meanwhile, look at this Jobs Report for today. I mean, it's fair to say Biden's having a good week. However, we know that his approval rating is meager, it's down around 41%. And the big question is whether he can translate what is pretty good political and economic news into a bump for his own approval rating, and that has been a challenge for Biden.

I'm not sure whether it's a messaging problem or his age, just concerns about his age, just override anything positive about the economy, or if inflation just trumps everything at this point. But Biden ought to have a pretty good message, and it just doesn't seem to be getting through.

- Hey, Rick, why don't you think it's getting through? Just in terms of the strategy, the messaging, you're right. If you look at the track record, it is pretty impressive, yet it hasn't and it still does not seem to be resonating with voters. How do you see or how would you suspect that messaging changing then over the next year and a half?

RICK NEWMAN: I think some of it is subtle. Biden has turned out to be a bit of a different president than, I think, many of us expected. He has been politically effective. He got a ton of stuff of his legislative priorities through Congress in the first two years, when Democrats did control both houses of Congress. Even though they just had that tiny 1-vote margin in the Senate, he got trillions of dollars of programs through, which is, I think, more than any other President.

You'd have to go back to, I don't know, maybe Bill Clinton in the 1990s. But yet, he can't-- he's just not-- people just don't like him that much. I think a lot of this is modern day politicking, with the importance of viral memes and everything. And, you know, what was really one of the biggest stories this week, Biden tripped on-stage while giving out a diploma. So those types of problems are going to dog him into 2024. And let's see if he can change the story a little bit.

- I felt so bad for him, watching that trip video. That's something I would do. Tripping over the sandbag in front of everyone.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

--for him in that moment.

RICK NEWMAN: I would too. But look, he's 80. And when you're 80, a fall is different.

- Yeah, very different. All right. Well, Rick Newman, great to have you. Thanks so much. Have a good weekend.

RICK NEWMAN: Bye, guys. You too.