As the deadline to raise the US debt ceiling looms, President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are set to resume negotiations. Anxiety mounts in Washington, with Biden cutting short his Asia trip to address the critical issue.
Anxiety grew in Washington Monday as President Joe Biden prepared to meet again with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for negotiations on raising the US debt ceiling, ten days before a critical deadline to avoid a disastrous default.
After a weekend of near deadlock, Biden arrived back in Washington late Sunday, cutting short a trip to Asia to resume talks ahead of the US Treasury’s June 1st cutoff date for Congress to authorize more borrowing.
Stock indexes opened in no clear direction, with the Dow Jones adding 0.02 percent as Wall Street focused on the standoff.
Biden and McCarthy spoke as the president flew back to the United States from the G7 summit in Japan on Air Force One.
Still, the two sides seemed far from a final compromise, as Biden said Republicans’ latest demands for spending cuts as a condition for raising the US government borrowing authority were “frankly unacceptable.”
“It’s time for the other side to move from their extreme positions,” he said at a press conference before leaving the G7 summit in Hiroshima.
McCarthy said his position remained unchanged.
“Washington cannot continue to spend money we do not have at the expense of children and grandchildren,” he said on Twitter after talking to Biden.
Biden said he was looking into an obscure constitutional clause in the 14th Amendment, which states that the validity of public debt “shall not be questioned”—and potentially authorizing the president to circumvent Congress and raise the debt ceiling himself.
The Treasury Department says the government could run out of money and default on payments on its $31 trillion debt as early as June 1st if Congress, where Republicans control the House of Representatives, does not authorize more borrowing.
The debt ceiling raise is usually an uncontroversial annual procedure. Still, this year the increasingly hard-right Republican Party has turned the threat of default into a powerful lever to try to force Biden to accept spending cuts.
With the 2024 election campaign underway and Biden potentially facing Donald Trump again, Republicans have seized the opportunity to paint Democrats as responsible for the country’s huge debt—which, in reality, has built up over decades.
Miroslava Salazar with AFP
