Republicans and Democrats ‘far from’ US debt deal
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy, said that they are still “far away” from an agreement with the White House and the Democrats to raise the US debt ceiling and prevent the country from falling into default, after a meeting on Tuesday with President Joe Biden.
McCarthy, on leaving the meeting, said to a journalist’s question about whether the positions are still far apart, to which he replied: “yes”.
The journalist then asked whether it would be possible to reach an agreement by the end of the week, to which the leader of the Republicans in the lower house replied in the affirmative.
“It is not difficult to reach an agreement,” reflected McCarthy, who described Tuesday’s meeting as productive.
As in that first meeting, today’s meeting was attended, in addition to Biden and McCarthy, by the leader of the conservative minority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, and the leaders of the Democrats in that chamber and the Lower House, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.
McCarthy said they have gotten a lot of work done in a short period of time, although he wished it had been done 100 days ago.
31.4 trillion dollars, the current US debt ceiling
Currently, Republicans, Democrats and the White House are negotiating to raise the country’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling after it was reached on 19 January.
Since then, the government has had to dip into its reserves to pay the debts it has incurred. The Treasury Department estimates that those reserves will be exhausted by 1 June, at which point the US would automatically enter a default, the first in its history.
After Tuesday’s meeting, the White House issued a statement describing the meeting as “productive and straightforward”, in which Biden stressed that while there is still work to be done on a range of “difficult” issues, he is optimistic that a deal can be reached if it is negotiated “in good faith and recognises that neither side can achieve everything it wants”.
Biden cancels part of his schedule
Biden, who will travel to Japan tomorrow for the 19-21 May G7 summit and has cancelled his subsequent trip to Papua New Guinea and Australia because of the lack of agreement on debt, has instructed his staff to continue meeting daily to address the issue.
He also plans to contact congressional leaders by phone later this week and meet with them upon his return from Japan.
From the White House, Schumer said that agreement is needed to avoid default because, he said, it would be a “disaster”.
“It’s something that everyone in the room understood and I’m glad to see that everyone understood that default would be a disaster,” Schumer said.
Jeffries stressed that everyone agreed at the meeting that “the only way forward is to reach a bipartisan agreement anchored in common ground”.
“We agreed that default is not acceptable and that we must avoid it,” Jeffries said, while stressing that they agreed that they have to proceed with “fierce urgency” to reach an agreement in time.
