Debt negotiations have stopped because the country is closer to a possible default

White House-Chaired Negotiations on Raising the U.S. Debt Limit: Two Republicans and a Stalemate

Talks between the White House and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy‘s team on raising the nation’s debt ceiling have adjourned for now, according to two Republican sources familiar with the status of the negotiations. A White House official confirmed that there was a stalemate.

President Biden is in Japan for the G-7 summit. Before he departed Tuesday, he said he was confident he could reach a deal with McCarthy that would pass through Congress.

If the debt limit isn’t raised soon, the U.S. may run out of cash to pay bills as early as June 1, according to the Treasury Secretary.

For months, Biden said he would only sign a “clean” debt limit bill — one that solely lifts the nation’s borrowing limit without addressing spending. House Republicans continue to insist that any deal that raises the debt limit must also include spending cuts.

Coming out of that meeting, the president designated Steve Ricchetti, who has served in multiple Democratic administrations; and Shalanda Young, a veteran Capitol Hill aide, as negotiators on behalf of the White House. McCarthy heaped praise on the pair on Thursday.

The White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about these closed-door negotiations, told NPR a deal is still possible, but said both sides have to negotiate in good faith and recognize they won’t get everything they want.

Talks will be difficult because of the differences between the parties on budget issues. A reasonable solution that can pass the House and the Senate is being worked on by the president’s team.

McCarthy wants to include work requirements for adults with no dependents, who receive support from safety net programs. It’s an area some Democratic lawmakers are worried Biden will agree to in order to avoid default.

In regards to Medicaid or any of the other programs, Biden said he would not accept cuts that go past what currently exist.

Some Democrats on Capitol Hill are growing increasingly worried that President Biden will give into too many demands from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in continuing talks over a deal to avoid a historic debt default.

Biden and McCarthy both said they were hopeful that a deal could happen after a second White House meeting earlier this week.

I can see how we could come to an agreement. McCarthy told the reporters that he thinks they have a structure and that everyone is working hard.

But with two weeks before the country runs out of money to pay its bills and negotiations limited to a tight circle of the president’s and the speaker’s negotiators, many progressive lawmakers are nervous about the lack of details about what is or isn’t on the table.

A key issue causing many on the left heartburn is Biden’s recent signal that he’s considering some changes to federal safety net programs, a central Republican demand.

Progressive Democrats are the most vocal about their trepidation—and are putting the president on notice that they are keeping a close eye on every morsel of information coming out of the negotiations.

I have voted before for the work requirements that exist and I am not going to accept any work requirements that go past what I already do. It’s possible that there could be a few more, but not anything of real consequence, he said when asked what the proposal was.

I understand that he voted for work requirements and other things in 1996, as well as in the crime bill of 1986,” she said. “But we didn’t elect the Joe Biden of 1986 and 1996. Joe Biden was elected in 2020.

Biden, the White House, and the Problem with Anti-Poverty Programs: A Brief Letter to the President on Debt Limit 14th Amendment

While the talks have narrowed between the president’s team and the speaker’s team, he wants Biden to hold the line.

“I have trust in the president on this,” he told NPR. “But I do want to make sure that him and administration know that we don’t want to see any cuts to these essential programs like SNAP,” referring to the program that distributes food assistance.

McCarthy wouldn’t say if additional rules were on the table or if they were about restrictions on federal benefits but he did say that there was a lot of benefit in putting restrictions on federal benefits.

But Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., told reporters he reached out to the Biden administration to say any deal that could impact anti-poverty programs needs to be rejected.

“The people that I’ve talked to in the White House have been reassuring from my point of view,” he said. “I haven’t talked directly to the president about this — you know, he’s overseas right now. What they are proposing would negatively affect the most vulnerable people in this country.

He said if he has to he will break his relationship with the president because he doesn’t want a bill that screws poor people.

The speaker runs a risk of not obtaining enough support from the majority of his party to approve a deal if he pushes too many aspects of the House GOP plan.

The president has a record of hammering out bipartisan legislation, but Ed said that the other person at the negotiation table is the problem.

The Massachusetts Democrat and 10 other Senate Democrats are pushing for the president to use the 14th amendment to the Constitution – which says the validity of the country’s public debt cannot be questioned – and the president can pay its bills even if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling.

“Republicans’ unwillingness to consider one penny in new revenue from the wealthy and large corporations, along with their diminishment of the disastrous consequences of default, have made it seemingly impossible to enact a bipartisan budget deal at this time,” the group wrote in a letter to Biden on Thursday.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/19/1176938636/debt-limit-14th-amendment

The Biden/Raskin Question: Why the 14th Amendment shouldn’t be a top priority for the presidency, or why it should not be the bottom line

Over time, the idea has been raised. Harvard’s Laurence Tribe is a former adviser to Biden and he thinks it would be a legitimate way to solve the problem.

Biden said May 9 that the debt limit extension would have to be litigated in order to avoid economic calamity. “I’m thinking about taking a look at it months down the road,” he said. I don’t think it will help our problem right now.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., acknowledged Democrats don’t have a lot of detail about what the president and the speaker are discussing. He says it’s better to have the 14th amendment and not agree to GOP demands.

“If it’s the bottom line, that the only deal to be had that McCarthy will sign on is one in which ordinary families are savaged and in which the economy is flooded with fossil fuels, that is not okay,” he said.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a former Constitutional law professor, has been pressing the case for the president to rely on the 14th amendment for months. He believes that the Constitution is the guiding authority.

Richard Neal does not want people to jump to any conclusions about where the debt ceiling bill will end up and whether or not new work requirements will make it in a deal.

He said that if you try to draw a bite from someone, it’s not likely that they’ll agree to the final package. “So who knows? But I do think that giving the president some latitude here is really important.”