Republicans Pull Out of Debt Ceiling Talks and Both Sides Dig In, Shattering Earlier Hopes for a Compromise

Speaker McCarthy’s debt ceiling negotiators abruptly withdrew from talks on Friday, saying the White House won’t discuss tying raising the debt ceiling to spending cuts, which Republicans are demanding. The impasse means the two sides are far apart, despite comments by President Biden and Mr. McCarthy earlier in the week that they thought a deal could be reached.One of Mr. McCarthy’s chief negotiators, Representative Garret Graves, told reporters Friday he felt that the White House was being “unreasonable right now.”“We decided to press pause because it’s just not productive,” Mr. Graves told reporters. “Until people are willing to have reasonable conversations about how you can actually move forward and do the right thing, then we’re not gonna sit here and talk to ourselves.”The move from the Republican negotiators comes a day after the conservative House Freedom Caucus released a statement calling for “no further discussion” of the debt ceiling until the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a bill that went through the House earlier this month. The bill is considered dead on arrival in the Senate.“We’re not saying you can’t continue to talk, but until they’re willing to tell us what they’re willing to do, it’s hard to come to an agreement,” the caucus chairman, Scott Perry, told CBS later.The temporary pause in negotiations in concert with the small revolt from the hard-right House caucus has called into question exactly how much support any deal brokered by Mr. McCarthy will have among House Republicans.In an interview with Politico, a far-left congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, suggested that Mr. McCarthy may not have as much support as he might suggest.“His party is not united. And not only is it not united by a little … most of the evidence is pointing that he only has two-thirds of his caucus and he may need many, many Democratic votes,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez told Politico. She and fellow so-called progressives are demanding the White House hold the line and refuse to agree to spending cuts.According to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Mr. McCarthy is going to need to find some 20 or 30 Democratic votes to get a debt-related bill passed in the House. For comparison, Democrats would only need to flip five Republicans to push through a discharge petition.With the Freedom Caucus in rebellion and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez suggesting that Mr. McCarthy doesn’t have the votes to pass a deal without ample support from the opposing party, Democrats may be in the driver’s seat in negotiations.Whether there are five Republicans that Democrats could flip to vote with them on a clean debt ceiling hike is unclear, but there are about 18 prime targets.The 18 are Republicans representing districts that Mr. Biden won in 2020 and who have been under pressure for weeks to abandon Mr. McCarthy and vote to resolve this matter sooner rather than later. Still, any flips probably wouldn’t come until the last second.“There are 18 House Republicans who like to call themselves ‘moderates,’” a Democratic congressman, Bredan Boyle, told the New York Times earlier this month. “Here’s a chance for them to really put their money where their mouth is. Join with House Democrats to ensure we don’t suffer the first-ever default in American history.”

Republicans Pull Out of Debt Ceiling Talks and Both Sides Dig In, Shattering Earlier Hopes for a Compromise

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