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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-California) and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) will leave after meeting with President Biden at the White House on Tuesday. The meeting scheduled for Friday will be canceled as the staff makes progress on negotiations to raise the debt ceiling.
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Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-California) and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) will leave after meeting with President Biden at the White House on Tuesday. The meeting scheduled for Friday will be canceled as the staff makes progress on negotiations to raise the debt ceiling.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
President Biden will not meet with congressional leaders on Friday to discuss the debt ceiling as planned, according to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s office.
Biden will meet with McCarthy, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at the White House to discuss the country’s nominations, which expire as early as early June. They had planned to continue talks to lift the debt ceiling. Tuesday’s meeting ended without any resolution.
McCarthy’s office said Friday that McCarthy, Biden and other leaders agreed that staff meetings should continue.
A person familiar with the meeting told NPR that Mr. Biden and congressional leaders postponed the meeting because they didn’t want to impede on-going progress.
“This is a positive development. The meeting is moving forward. Staff are continuing the meeting, but it wasn’t the right time to bring it back to the principal,” he said of the private meeting on condition of anonymity. said the person.
McCarthy told reporters he plans to meet with the president and congressional leaders again next week.
“The staff have met for the past two days and we think it will be productive for the staff to meet again,” McCarthy said.
Louisiana Republican Rep. Mike Johnson, a member of McCarthy’s leadership team, told NPR he was “cautiously optimistic” about the situation. Regarding ongoing staff talks, Johnson said, “These are a series of steps necessary to make it all happen and we all know that, and the fact that staff are still meeting and negotiating. is very important,” he said.
What can be considered on the table of spending cuts?
Rep. Garrett Graves, the leader of the House Republican debt ceiling bill that passed last month, told reporters earlier Thursday that negotiators could find common ground on those four areas.
- Provisions to Expedite the Approval of Energy Projects
- Adding stricter labor requirements for recipients of safety net programs such as food stamps
- Recover unused COVID-19 relief funds
- Set spending caps on federal programs for a period of time
A senior Democratic aide told NPR the president said he was open to including the recovery of unspent coronavirus funds in the deal.
Democrats have agreed to cap spending as part of previous bipartisan deals to raise the debt ceiling, but the talks are pressing Republicans to discuss tax increases as part of any framework.
“If the White House wants revenue, they’re looking in the wrong direction,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (RS.D.) told reporters.
Graves said he has been in discussions with senior Biden administration officials, such as Special Envoy for Climate Change John Kerry, and they agree on the need for the reform permit. He said a group of House and Senate Democrats, including West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, support changes to the current system. Graves called the Republican bill’s proposal “a viable good start.”
With the clock ticking toward an early June deadline set by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to run out of money to pay the government’s bills, some are considering a short-term debt ceiling extension. is floating.
McCarthy has repeatedly objected to this, and Johnson told reporters it was “absolutely out of consideration”. But he agreed with Yellen’s schedule of action, saying, “A default would be terrible for our country.”
NPR reporter Barbara Splant contributed to this report.
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