McCarthy says no ‘movement’ on debt ceiling after Biden meet
A high-stakes White House conference between congressional leaders and President Biden yielded little progress in ending the debt ceiling deadlock Tuesday, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy saying there was no “new movement” in anyone’s positions — while the commander-in-chief threatened to invoke the 14th Amendment in a last-ditch bid to avoid default.
“Everybody in this meeting reiterated the positions they were at. I didn’t see any new movement,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters outside the White House. “The president said the staffs should get back together, but I was very clear with the president – we have now just two weeks to go.”
McCarthy’s characterization of the meeting differed from the 80-year-old president’s, who called the get-together “productive.”
Biden also wouldn’t rule out the unprecedented move of raising the debt ceiling unilaterally through the 14th Amendment, which states that “[t]he validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned.” However, the president acknowledged the move would be open to lengthy legal challenges.
“I have been considering the 14th Amendment,” Biden told reporters after the meeting. “And a man I have enormous respect for, Larry Tribe, who advised me for a long time, thinks that it would be legitimate but the problem is it would have to be litigated and in the meantime without an extension it would still end up in the same place.”
The sit-down between Biden, McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was organized last week after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned lawmakers that the government could default as early as June 1 if the debt ceiling is not raised.
The four congressional leaders and the president will meet again on Friday. AP
McCarthy said the quintet would get back together for discussions on Friday, and Biden said their staffs would meet daily until then.
The House speaker noted that Tuesday’s meeting was the first face-to-face discussion he’s had with the president on the debt limit since February.
“Unfortunately, the president has waited 97 days without ever meeting. Every day I asked, ‘Could we meet?’ And he said, ‘No,’” McCarthy said.
“The House has raised the debt ceiling in a responsible manner,” he added, referencing a bill passed in the Republican-controlled chamber last month that would allow the federal government to borrow another $1.5 trillion or until March 31, 2024 – whichever milestone is reached first – in exchange for discretionary spending cuts for non-defense programs and limits on the growth of future expenditures to 1% per year for the next decade.
Biden met with McCarthy for the first time in 97 days on Tuesday. AFP via Getty Images
Biden took issue with the House speaker’s narrative that he refused to meet for 97 days, telling reporters, “I said to him at the time, ‘I’m happy to talk to you — you submit your budget, I’ll submit mine, and we’ll talk about it.'”
“I submitted my budget on March 9, in detail. He passed his plan, I think in the last or second to last week of April. Five days later, after he finally put forward something, I call on him to invite him to a meeting,” the president added.
McConnell, meanwhile, was adamant that despite the impasse, the US was not in danger of defaulting for the first time ever.
“The United States is not going to default. It never has and it never will,” the Kentucky Republican declared.
Biden said he was “pleased, but not surprised” to hear McConnell’s comments ruling out a default during their Oval Office discussion, adding that the Senate Republican leader was “absolutely correct.”
The House passed a Republican-backed measure to raise the debt ceiling tied to spending cuts. AP
McCarthy wasn’t as certain, telling reporters: “I’ve done everything in my power to make sure it will not default … Now, I haven’t seen that in the Senate. So I don’t know.”
McConnell, a veteran of several debt ceiling battles between Congress and the White House, added the solution to the stalemate “lies with two people: the president of the United States, who can sign a bill and deliver the members of his party to vote for it, and the speaker of the House.”
The Republican leader added that there was “no sentiment in the Senate – certainly not 60 votes” to raise the nation’s borrowing limit without strings attached, a so-called “clean” debt ceiling bill.
“So, there must be an agreement. And the sooner the president and the speaker can reach an agreement, the sooner we can solve the problem,” he said.
On Schumer, McCarthy accused the New York Democrat of trying “to take us to the brink.”
Biden agreed with McConnell that the US would not default on its debt under any scenario. AFP via Getty Images
“If Chuck Schumer could pass something we’d go to conference right away and solve that,” the speaker said. “But I don’t think Chuck Schumer can pass anything. They haven’t dealt with it.”
Biden declared Monday that the House-passed bill was “dead on arrival” both in the Senate and if it somehow reaches his desk due to what he called its “massive cuts.”
The president also described the tenor of the meeting as “low-key” aside from a few moments that he pinned on McCarthy.
“Occasionally there would be a little bit of an assertion that maybe was over the top from the speaker,” Biden said.
The president added that he would not travel to the G-7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, later this month “if somehow we got down to the wire” in negotiations, but predicted that such a drastic step was “not likely.”
Source: New York Post
