Under Pressure From Fellow Democrats, Biden Agrees To Meet With Republicans on Debt Limit

After weeks of refusing to sit down with congressional leaders to work on a debt ceiling compromise, President Biden agreed to meet with Speaker McCarthy and his fellow Republicans in order to avoid default before what is now possibly a June 1 deadline. On Monday, Secretary Yellen wrote a letter to the speaker saying that the Department of the Treasury’s “best estimate” is that the government “will be unable to continue to satisfy all of the government’s obligations by early June, and potentially as early as June 1,” raising the stakes for the meeting even higher. Shortly thereafter, the president invited the “Big Four” — the Democratic and Republican leaders of both the House and Senate — to the White House for a meeting. The House Democratic leader, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, and Senator Schumer, echoing a refrain that has been coming from the White House for weeks, released a statement calling for a “clean” debt limit with no changes to federal spending.Mr. McCarthy laid blame for the standoff squarely at the feet of Mr. Biden and Senate Democrats. “House Republicans did their job and passed a responsible bill,” he said in a statement, referring to the recently passed Republican debt limit proposal. “The Senate and the President need to get to work — and soon.”Moderate Democrats on Capitol Hill have long called on the president to sit down with the speaker. Senator Manchin said the House has done its job and now the president must meet with lawmakers. “We will achieve a historic default, and the economic whirlwind which follows, if President Biden continues to refuse to even negotiate a reasonable and commonsense compromise,” Mr. Manchin said.The calls are coming from beyond the party’s more conservative members. Senators Durbin and Klobuchar — both members of Democratic leadership — said the president should sit down with the speaker. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history, said the two men “ought to have a nice dinner” and work out a framework. Congresswoman Debbie Dingell — a friend of Mr. Biden’s — said the president “can’t keep waiting.”The House passed the Republican debt limit proposal last week by a margin of 217–215, with four Republicans and all Democrats voting against the measure. All four Republicans who voted against the bill offered some variation of the same rationale: while the bill does curb spending, it does not move fast enough. “Whether you drive off a cliff at 60 miles per hour or 80 miles per hour, the end result is the same: a horrific crash,” Congressman Andy Biggs, who voted against the bill, said in a statement. Mr. McCarthy’s debt limit bill, as passed through the House, would not receive the necessary 60 votes in the Senate. According to Fox News, Mr. Schumer will not put the Republican debt limit plan on the floor because — even though it is not likely to pass — it could still receive a majority of votes given some moderate members’ position and the absence of Senator Feinstein, making the Democrats look like the obstructionists. Some have said Mr. Biden’s no-compromise position is born of his involvement in the 2011 debt ceiling negotiations between the Obama administration and then-Speaker Boehner. As the nation neared default, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country’s credit rating for the first time in history, to AA+ from AAA. In the weeks surrounding the negotiations, the S&P 500 index fell by more than 15 percent and 10-year Treasury yields dropped by more than a third. The “lesson of 2011,” one Obama administration official told NBC News, is that Democrats cannot allow Republicans to “use the threat of default or not increasing the debt limit as a negotiating tool.”The Republican bill’s cuts to federal spending on healthcare, research and development, science initiatives, climate mitigation, welfare, and education are a conservative’s dreams come true — and things Mr. Biden is not likely to support. The White House has called the funding cuts “devastating,” because they return federal non-defense discretionary spending to pre-pandemic levels while capping the yearly increase at one percent. Mr. McCarthy sounded the alarm bells about a possible default on the national debt earlier in the week. He called President Biden’s refusal to negotiate a threat to the economy.Mr. McCarthy’s inability to address the concerns of his caucus could lead to his ouster. Congressman Eli Crane — a Freedom Caucus member who believes the debt limit proposal does not go far enough — told CNN that he has had conversations with some of his Freedom Caucus colleagues about calling for a vote of no confidence in the speaker, which could lead to another seemingly endless voting process to either retain Mr. McCarthy or choose a new leader.“It does come up from time to time,” Mr. Crane said of the possibility of removing Mr. McCarthy. “We look at all of the alternatives and contingency plans that could play out over the next two years.”

Under Pressure From Fellow Democrats, Biden Agrees To Meet With Republicans on Debt Limit

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