Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) negotiators will meet at the White House on Wednesday with President Joe Biden’s team to continue discussions on the debt ceiling.
Up until now, the talks have taken place at the Capitol, but the two teams have agreed to the change of venue, McCarthy confirmed to reporters, expressing hope they can “finish up negotiations” there. Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) also expressed hope the meeting would help iron out sticking points and “finalize” a deal just eight days ahead of the default deadline.
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Scalise said he thinks it’s “still possible” to get a bill passed by the House and Senate before the June 1 deadline, even with the caveat that any legislation would need to be available for review at least 72 hours before holding a vote, according to House rules.
“It shows how there needs to be higher sense of urgency by the White House to engage in a more serious way. You know, again, they’ve acted like the clock doesn’t matter and that the deadline doesn’t matter,” Scalise said. “So the June 1 deadline mustn’t be that important to the president and surely not that important to the Senate because they, for weeks now, could have taken up the bill we passed them.”
On Tuesday, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) said the reason they were meeting at the Capitol was that House Republicans had already passed a bill raising the debt ceiling. If they hadn’t, he said, they would be meeting at the White House with their “proverbial hat in hand.”
McHenry and Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA), McCarthy’s top negotiators, were seen leaving the Capitol around 12:30 p.m. to meet with the White House.
“We’ve been working all night trying to look at things differently, trying to come up with new ideas,” Graves said.
McCarthy expressed confidence negotiators would be able to make progress during their Wednesday meeting but noted the teams are “still far apart” on a number of matters. Among those disagreements are spending caps, which the White House and Republicans have wrestled over since before negotiations began.
“You have to spend less than you spent last year. That’s not that difficult to do,” McCarthy said. “But in Washington, somehow, that is a problem. They have increased spending with the Democrats in the majority. … We can find waste, we can eliminate that.”
Republicans have said their top priority is reverting discretionary funding — that is, money that must be appropriated each year — back to fiscal 2022 levels and capping future spending increases at 1%. GOP leaders argue those limits would slash $131 billion in discretionary spending over the next year and $3.6 trillion over the next decade.
The White House proposed late last week to freeze next year’s spending at 2023 levels, a suggestion that frustrated Republicans and failed to break the impasse in negotiations.
McCarthy has flatly rejected Democratic demands, reiterating his stance on Wednesday that he would not accept a clean debt ceiling increase. When asked what concessions he’d be willing to offer, the speaker said raising the debt ceiling was his middle ground.
“I’m willing to make America stronger, to curb inflation, [have] less dependency on China, and spend less than we spent a year before,” McCarthy said.
The pressure is on for lawmakers to come to an agreement and get a bill passed as quickly as possible, with the country at risk of defaulting as soon as June 1, according to the deadline given by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
The United States hit its debt ceiling on Jan. 19. At the time, Yellen said her agency would take “extraordinary measures” to prevent the U.S. from defaulting on its obligations, but those measures could be exhausted in the coming weeks.
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Negotiators met Tuesday for a little over two hours in what McCarthy described as a “good talk,” but they’re still far apart on matters such as work requirements.
Graves and McHenry spoke to the team of White House negotiators on the phone throughout the night on Tuesday. The White House negotiating team is composed of Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, Steve Ricchetti, senior adviser to the president, and Louisa Terrell, the director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs.
