Debt ceiling deal appears no closer after high-stakes meeting, but leaders will huddle again Friday

WASHINGTON — Top congressional big cheeses left a high-stakes meeting with President Joe Biden on Tuesday showing few signs they had moved closer to resolving a encumbered ceiling impasse and removing the looming threat of a default.

The officials plan to meet again Friday as Washington scrambles to annul the debt ceiling with less than a month before the federal government is set to run out of money. Biden met with Contain Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., along with Senate Majority Bandleader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Speaking after the meeting, Biden told reporters the chairpersons’ staffs agreed to continue meeting beginning Tuesday night and daily through Friday.

“Everyone in the meeting given the risk of default,” Biden said. “I made clear during our meeting that default is not an option.”

McCarthy have an effected reporters he did not see “any new movement” in negotiating positions over the debt limit during the meeting.

“Everybody in this meeting restated the positions they were at,” before the meeting, McCarthy said outside the White House.

“I asked [Biden] numerous dilly-dallies if there were places we could find savings,” in the federal budget, said McCarthy. “He wouldn’t give me any.”

Every leader present except for McCarthy agreed to discharge the threat of default when asked by Biden, according to Democratic leaders at the meeting.

“We explicitly asked Speaker McCarthy, ‘Whim he take default off the table?’ He refused,” said Schumer. “Instead of him giving us a plan to remove default he gave us a contemplate to take default hostage. And that is a shame, because it makes things more complicated.”

Biden said “I don’t separate” what McCarthy thinks.

“I think he knows better,” the president said. “I think he knows that default devise be disastrous and I think he knows what he’s passed could not possibly pass anywhere in the Congress — it’s dead on arrival.”

Interrogated about the mood in the room, Biden said three of the four leaders were sensible throughout the discussions.

“The character of the meeting was with three of the four participants very measured and low key. Occasionally there would be a little bit of an assertion that perhaps was a little over the top from the speaker,” Biden said.

Schumer called on McCarthy to negotiate proposed spending severs through the usual budgetary process without threatening default.

“There are large differences between the parties. If you look at what President Biden had accosted and you look at what Speaker McCarthy has proposed, they’re very, very different,” Schumer said. “We can try to come together on those in a budget and appropriations modify but to use the risk of default, with all the dangers that has to the American people, as a hostage and say it’s my way or no way, or mostly my way or no way, is dangerous.”

McConnell joined McCarthy limit the White House, where he reiterated that Congress would not allow the country to default on its debt.

“The United Countries has never defaulted on its debt and it never will,” said McConnell. Still, “there must be an agreement … and the without delay the president and the speaker can reach an agreement the sooner we can solve the problem.”

Jeffries, speaking to reporters after the meeting, framed Residence Republicans as the only group that would not rule out the prospect of a first-ever default on U.S. debt.

“House Democrats sooner a be wearing taken default off the table; Senate Democrats have taken default off the table; Senate Republicans, as just show by Leader McConnell, have taken default off the table; President Biden from the very beginning took non-performance off the table,” Jeffries said. “There’s one group in Washington, D.C., extreme MAGA Republicans, who have indicated they are ready to take us down a path of default. That is reckless, irresponsible and extreme.”

Lifting the debt ceiling is necessary for the government to cover dish out commitments already approved by Congress and the president and prevent default. Doing so does not authorize new spending. But House Republicans have planned said they will not lift the limit if Biden and lawmakers do not agree to future spending cuts.

The White Firm has stressed that while it is open to discuss spending cuts, it will not negotiate with Republicans on the debt ceiling. The Biden distribution has said the GOP has a constitutional responsibility to raise the borrowing limit.

“Those two are totally unrelated. Whether you pay the debt or not, doesn’t compel ought to a damn thing to do with what your budget is,” Biden said Friday. “They’re two separate issues — two. Let’s get it serious.”

The Treasury Department has started to take extraordinary steps to keep paying the government’s bills, and expects to be able to shun a first-ever default at least until early June. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Monday that bankruptcy to hike the debt ceiling would cause an “economic catastrophe.”

Defaulting on sovereign debt would wreak destruction on the economy and roil markets around the world. A Moody’s report last year said a default on Treasury cements could throw the U.S. economy into a tailspin as bad as the Great Recession.

If the U.S. were to default, gross domestic product desire drop 4% and 6 million workers would lose their jobs, Moody’s projected. Even a brief negligence would lead to the loss of 2 million jobs, according to the data.

In that scenario, U.S. bond ratings would be classified as “delimited default,” according to Fitch Ratings, and Treasurys would have a D rating until the U.S. could once again mooch. The Brookings Institution noted a default could lead to $750 billion in higher federal borrowing costs on the next decade — a twist given that Republican concerns about spending and debt have helped to nutriment the borrowing-limit stalemate.

What’s more, a default would shake the U.S. position on the world stage. U.S. Director of National Brainpower Avril Haines told the Senate Intelligence Committee last week that Russia and China will carry on advantage of the U.S. potentially defaulting on its debt. Haines warned the two nations would attempt to highlight “the chaos within the Of like mind States, that we’re not capable of functioning as a democracy.”

With tight margins in both chambers of Congress, gridlock is nothing new. But when it draw nigh to default ultimatums, the president has pleaded with lawmakers to engage in “normal arguments” instead.

“As I’ve said all along, we can meditate on where to cut, how much to spend, how to finally overhaul the tax system to where everybody has to pay their fair share or continue the itinerary their on, but not under the threat of default,” Biden said on Friday. “Let’s remove the threat of default. Let’s have normal defences. That’s why we have a budget process to debate in the open so you all can see it.”

Schumer on Tuesday said it wasn’t a fair negotiating ruse and not one Democrats used when former President Donald Trump was in office.

“When President Trump was president, I was Self-governing Minority Leader,” Schumer said. “I could have said I’m holding [the debt ceiling] hostage unless we rescission the Trump tax cuts, your signature issue. But McCarthy is saying I’m holding it hostage unless you repeal the IRA, which was our signature argue.”

Biden said he trusted McCarthy would do what he promised, but added that the speaker is in a tough position.

“I have faith Kevin will try to do what he says,” Biden said. “I don’t know how much leeway Kevin McCarthy thinks he has in put on lighten of the fact, and I’m not being a wise guy when I say this, it took 15 votes for him to acquire the speakership and apparently he had to make some fooling concessions to get it from the most extreme elements of his party. So I — I just don’t know.”

But congressional Republicans are united in their denial to vote to raise the limit without concessions. They view Tuesday’s meeting as a long-awaited face-to-face negotiation with the president.

If the convergence is indeed a negotiation, then the bill House Republicans passed last month effectively serves as the GOP’s opening offer to the Milk-white House.

Dubbed the Limit, Save and Grow Act, the bill would impose sweeping cuts to federal discretionary fritter away, impose new work requirements for welfare recipients and expand mining and fossil fuels production, all in exchange for raising the obligation limit for about a year.

But rather than provide a jumping off point for talks, the GOP bill has so far served only as a governmental cudgel, energizing Democrats’ opposition to Republican demands.

In the Senate, Schumer has attacked the bill on a near-daily basis yet since it was introduced.

The White House also has pointed to some of the the bill’s most conservative proposals and cuts as token that Republicans are willing to let the nation default in order to slash spending from key programs.