Biden and McCarthy also spoke by phone on Sunday as the president flew home from a G7 summit in Japan.
Washington:
A top US Republican said Monday that his first one-on-one talks in months with President Joe Biden to avoid a catastrophic debt settlement had been “productive” but that there was still no deal.
The meeting at the White House came after Biden returned early from a trip to Asia to broker a deal ahead of the June 1 closing date of the U.S. Treasury for Congress to authorize more loans.
“I thought we had a productive discussion. We don’t have an agreement yet, but I found the discussion productive in areas (where) we have differences,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said after the talks.
McCarthy told reporters that negotiators would “work through the night” to bring the sides closer together and that he and Biden would “talk every day to try and figure out a way to get this done.”
Debt limits are raised periodically to cover loan repayments that have already been approved and issued, but House Republicans this time insist that avoiding a default must be accompanied by significant spending cuts to reduce the country’s debt of 31 .8 trillion dollars.
As they sat down for the meeting, Biden said, “I’m optimistic we’ll make some progress,” adding that both sides understood they have “a significant responsibility” to break the impasse.
– ‘Red line’ –
The on-again, off-again discussions sputtered throughout the weekend, with McCarthy’s team and White House negotiators meeting for more than two hours on Sunday evening and another three on Monday.
Biden and McCarthy also spoke by phone on Sunday as the president flew home from a G7 summit in Japan.
Republicans are pushing to spend less money in fiscal year 2024 than in 2023, calling it a “red line.”
The White House has offered a 2024 freeze in exchange for Republicans supporting tax increases for businesses and wealthy Americans, but McCarthy has rejected the idea.
The Biden administration has proposed cutting spending on some domestic programs but wants the Pentagon to share in the cuts.
Republicans have pushed for increased spending on military and border security, with major rollbacks to non-defense programs.
Disputes also remain over what one White House official characterized as increasingly tough Republican demands for tougher job requirements for Social Security programs.
Biden points out that Republicans under his predecessor Donald Trump raised the credit ceiling three times without threatening to default on the country’s debt obligations.
If lawmakers do not raise the borrowing ceiling, the government will default for the first time in history, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Many experts say that, in a worst-case scenario, global stock markets would collapse as the US economy spirals downward, killing millions of jobs.
– deadline June 1 –
The president is being pressured by progressives in his party to rely on the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution – which states that the validity of the national debt “shall not be questioned” – to bypass Congress and push the limit in his raise one.
But he and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned the courts would be unable to resolve any legal disputes quickly enough to meet the deadline.
Yellen sent a letter to Congress on Monday warning once again that the United States may not be able to pay its bills by June 1.
Even if McCarthy and Biden can make a broad deal, anything they agree on will have to be passed through the House of Representatives, where they’ll be under pressure from hardliners on both sides not to make too many concessions.
Complicating the timeline further is that the Senate is out this week, while the House will be in recess Friday before Memorial Day weekend.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
