Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) blamed the White House for holding up the debt ceiling negotiations as he left a meeting with negotiators on Friday.
“Until people are willing to have reasonable conversations about how you can actually move forward and do the right thing, then we’re not going to sit here and talk to ourselves,” Graves, whom Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) tapped to be his lead negotiator, told reporters as he left the meeting.
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He said the negotiations have been paused for now because they were “not productive.”
“There are real differences between the parties on budget issues and talks will be difficult,” a White House official said in a statement. “The President’s team is working hard towards a reasonable bipartisan solution that can pass the House and the Senate.”
President Joe Biden and McCarthy agreed to a framework of designated negotiators between their teams after a White House meeting earlier this week.
McCarthy told reporters that “we gotta pause” the negotiations. He said, in whatever debt ceiling compromise comes together, they “have to spend less than we spent the year before.”
Walking into McCarthy’s office, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), a McCarthy ally and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, agreed that the talks had to be paused and said he is less optimistic Friday than he was on Thursday about coming to a deal with the White House.
“We’re at a difficult moment, and we’ve got some very serious problems,” McHenry said. “We’re not at a sufficient moment for this package to meet the expectations the speaker set for us.”
McHenry declined to get into the specifics of what broke down in the debt ceiling talks.
Biden is currently overseas for the G-7 summit, though he is expected to touch on the debt ceiling in a press conference on Sunday.
Both sides had signaled optimism about a deal in recent days, saying default on the debt is not an option.
Financial markets initially dipped upon word talks had broken down.
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This is a breaking story and will be updated.
