US President Joe Biden has cut his foreign trip short due to the looming debt ceiling crisis, adding urgency to talks that resumed Tuesday at the White House with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other congressional leaders.
Biden canceled his trip to Papua New Guinea and Australia, according to three officials familiar with the decision. She will still attend the G-7 summit to be held in Hiroshima, Japan.
McCarthy stated that the parties remain far apart, but that a deal before the end of the week is “possible.”
“We’re just getting started,” Biden declared in brief statements to the press prior to the meeting, which takes place in the Oval Office, while the other attendees — McCarthy; Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer; House Minority Leader Democrat Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican, and Vice President Kamala Harris — sat in silence.
Biden has remained optimistic about the talks, while McCarthy has said publicly that negotiators have made little progress before the June 1 deadline, when the Treasury Department says the United States could start defaulting on its debts.
Although Biden has been optimistic, saying “we’ll be able to do it,” McCarthy has urged the president to move more quickly and has been much more pessimistic about the state of the negotiations. He and other Republicans are demanding budget cuts in exchange for their support for raising the debt ceiling. Biden insists that both issues should not be linked.
“How much is too much?” McCarthy said Tuesday of the nation’s $31 trillion in debt, as he pushed for tougher work requirements for government aid recipients as a way to cut spending.
