Democrats Acknowledge ‘Productive’ Talks Even as Nation Slides Towards Default
Nation just weeks away from potential economic meltdown
Both sides acknowledge some progress in the partisan standoff over the federal debt ceiling, but still no tangible solutions have emerged as the nation comes within weeks of an unprecedented default by the federal government.
The federal government has hit its cap on paying its bills, and the extraordinary measures which the government has been using in the meantime will run out as early as June 1, the so-called “x date.”
If the debt limit is not raised by that date, the federal government will — for the first time in history — fall into default and trigger an economic meltdown effecting all Americans.
Although Congress has approved an increase in the government's debt limit dozens of times under presidents of both parties in past decades, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other House Republicans want to hold such an increase hostage to President Biden and Democrats agreeing to a raft of draconian cuts in federal spending.
Biden and other Democrats oppose such drastic cuts, and are against the Republican attempt to use the debt limit as a political weapon.
The White House Tuesday announced that Biden will cut his upcoming overseas trip short due to the ongoing debt ceiling talks. While he will attend the international G7 meeting in Japan, the president will skip a planned visit to Australia and elsewhere in that region.
“The president and congressional leaders had a productive meeting. They had a direct conversation on the importance of making sure America does not default on our debt for the first time. So that’s one part of the conversation that they had,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski Wednesday. “The other part of it is to make sure that there’s a responsible, bipartisan budget agreement that gets to his desk. And like you stated in the beginning of your question to me, Mika, yes, there are a range of issues that they need to discuss.
“The president directed his staff to have this conversation on the staff level and to deal with how we get to a bipartisan – again, reasonable — agreement on the budget,” Jean-Pierre added. “The president is looking forward to having conversations with the congressional leader on the phone later this week and meeting with them again when he comes back overseas. We are not a deadbeat nation. You heard this from the president over and over again.
“This is Congress’s constitutional duty to get this done, as it relates to debt limit. We should not be in this position. We should not. This is something that has been done 78 times since 1960,” she continued. “Let’s not forget, Democrats joined Republicans in a bipartisan way put politics aside three times in the last administration, the Trump administration, to get this done. So this is where we have. We have an ‘x date’ from the Treasury Department on what needs to get done before that date is passing and getting done the debt limit which Congress can do. They could have done this a long time ago.”
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