President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet on Monday to discuss a debt ceiling, following a phone call after the president returned to Washington from Hiroshima.
This was announced on Sunday by the main leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives.
Earlier on Sunday, the president called the Republicans’ latest proposal to raise the national debt ceiling “unacceptable” but added that he was prepared to cut spending as well as tax adjustments to reach a deal.
Before leaving Hiroshima for the G-7 leaders’ summit, the president hinted that some Republicans in Congress were prepared to accept the catastrophic consequences of defaulting on the national debt to prevent him from being re-elected in 2024.
With less than two weeks to go until June 1, the Treasury Department has warned that the federal government may not be able to repay all of its debt, causing chaos in financial markets and a spike in rates. of interest.
Biden said he would speak with Kevin McCarthy when he returns from Japan.
“A lot of what they’ve already offered, frankly, is just unacceptable,” Biden said. “It’s time for Republicans to recognize that a bipartisan deal cannot be made on their party’s terms alone. They must also take steps (towards).
McCarthy, in an interview with Fox, said a conversation between him and Biden could take place Sunday morning.
Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy speaks to reporters. Capitol. Washington DC. May 21, 2023
“The difficulty is that nothing is agreed,” McCarthy said, adding that previous talks looked promising for reaching a compromise, but Biden changed course. “Everything was not bad, he went abroad, and now he wants to change the course of the negotiations.”
Over the past two days, negotiations have become increasingly tense. Democratic and Republican negotiators said Friday’s Capitol meetings yielded no progress and the parties did not meet on Saturday.
The president said he believes he has the right to use the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to raise the debt ceiling without Congressional intervention, but it’s unclear if there’s enough time to try. to do so, and whether he has real legal powers.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in an interview with NBC on Sunday said June 1 remains a “tough deadline” to raise the federal debt ceiling, saying the government is likely to generate enough revenue to pay the bills by June 15, when additional taxes are on income “pretty low.”
A source familiar with the talks said Republicans had proposed increasing defense spending while cutting overall spending. The source said the Biden administration has proposed leaving non-defense discretionary spending the same next year.
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