CNN
—
President Joe Biden and Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet Wednesday, a White Home official confirmed, the primary such gathering for the reason that California Republican captured the speakership earlier this month.
The assembly comes because the Treasury Division continues to take extraordinary measures to maintain the federal government paying its payments after the US hit the debt ceiling set by Congress.
“I need to discover a cheap and a accountable manner that we are able to raise the debt ceiling however take management of this runaway spending,” McCarthy mentioned Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS.
“So I need to sit down collectively, work out an settlement that we are able to transfer ahead to place us on a path to stability on the similar time, not put any of our debt in jeopardy on the similar time,” he mentioned.
Onerous-line Republicans, who maintain important sway within the Home due to their social gathering’s slim majority, have demanded that lifting the borrowing cap be tied to spending reductions.
The White Home, nevertheless, has countered that it’s going to not provide any concessions or negotiate on elevating the debt ceiling. And with the answer to the debt ceiling drama squarely in lawmakers’ palms, fears are rising that the partisan brinksmanship may end result within the nation defaulting on its debt for the primary time ever – or come dangerously near doing so.
Within the assembly, Biden will remind McCarthy of his “Constitutional obligation to forestall a nationwide default, as each different Home and Senate chief in U.S. historical past has performed, and as Leaders McConnell, Schumer, and Jeffries have pledged to do,” a spokesperson mentioned in a press release to CNN. “He’ll underscore that the financial safety of all Individuals can’t be held hostage to power unpopular cuts on working households.”
The spokesperson added, “The President will ask what the Speaker’s plan is, for the reason that first invoice he placed on the ground would enhance the deficit by greater than $100 billion with a view to shield rich tax cheats and different proposals from Home Republicans would lower Social Safety, Medicare, and different vital applications that working households and seniors have earned.”
McCarthy on Sunday steered that protection spending may doubtlessly be on the desk, however he made clear that cuts to Social Safety and Medicare weren’t an choice.
“I first suppose, our very first accountability, we each ought to need to move a price range. We each ought to need to move the appropriation payments so the nation can see the path we’re going. However you can’t proceed the spending that has introduced this inflation, that has introduced our financial issues. We’ve bought to get our spending underneath management,” he mentioned.
Earlier this month, White Home press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre mentioned the 2 males would meet on a spread of subjects, however insisted that elevating the debt restrict was “not negotiable.”
“President Biden appears to be like ahead to assembly with Speaker McCarthy to debate a spread of points, as a part of a sequence of conferences with all new Congressional leaders to start out the yr,” Jean-Pierre mentioned. “Just like the President has mentioned many instances, elevating the debt ceiling is just not a negotiation; it’s an obligation of this nation and its leaders to keep away from financial chaos.”
