U.S. President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met for a third time at the White House on April 22 to discuss raising the federal debt limit, but no agreement was reached.
However, both sides described the talks as productive, leaving the door open for an agreement with just 10 days to go before the June 1 default date (X-Date), which the U.S. government estimates is the day the country will default.
According to Reuters, the day’s negotiations saw Republicans demanding spending cuts from the Biden administration, which the White House said were excessive, and Republicans balking at Biden’s push for new taxes targeting the wealthy.
Despite the disagreements, President Biden said in a statement that the negotiations were “productive” and “we reiterated once again that we are not considering default and that the only way forward is to work in good faith toward a bipartisan agreement.”
House Speaker McCarthy also spoke to reporters after the meeting, saying that he “thinks we had a productive discussion” and that he still believes an agreement can be reached.
Biden and McCarthy previously met at the White House on Sept. 9 and 16 to discuss the debt limit, but failed to reach an agreement.
Biden canceled a trip to Australia and other countries after attending the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Hiroshima, Japan, and returned home the day before to negotiate with Congress. The White House and the GOP continued working-level discussions over the weekend, but no progress was made.
“We can reach an agreement tonight, we can reach an agreement tomorrow morning,” McCarthy said before the meeting, “but we need to get a deal done this week so we can send a bill to the Senate.”
He said he would be talking to Biden daily and that working-level negotiations would continue, and Reuters, citing sources, reported that the actual White House negotiators had returned to the White House to resume talks that night.
The GOP has reportedly been pushing for cuts to some programs to help low-income people and a rollback of COVID-19 funding in the negotiations. When it comes to next year’s government spending, the GOP has also stuck to its position of cutting spending to the previous year’s level토토사이트.
President Biden, who is up for re-election next year, has been open to negotiations, including some spending cuts, but has made it clear that the current Republican proposal is unacceptable.
Even if the two sides do reach an agreement, the challenge of internal persuasion remains.
The far-right wing of the Republican Party is calling for a break in negotiations and for the Senate to take up the GOP debt limit bill that passed the House. The extreme progressive wing of the Democratic Party opposes spending cuts and believes President Biden should invoke the 14th Amendment to raise the debt limit on his own.