Debt Ceiling Deadline Raises Eyebrows Over Biden’s Negotiation Strategy

Debt ceiling deadline raises eyebrows over Biden’s negotiation strategy The White House and congressional Republican aides will huddle over the weekend to discuss the debt ceiling and a potential spending compromise as the country contends with the prospect of a default.

But with Republicans no longer doubting Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s June 1 X Date projection and President Joe Biden scheduled to travel abroad next Wednesday for a week, the two sides have an increasingly narrow window of time to avoid economic disaster.

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Biden’s “delay tactics,” declining to meet with Republicans over the debt ceiling without a budget counteroffer, “have put our country directly in harm’s way,” according to Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD), chairman of the Republican Main Street Caucus.

“Republicans worked diligently to pass a plan that addresses our spending crisis and the debt limit,” Johnson told the Washington Examiner. “The president needs to take our plan seriously.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) underscored that the postponement of Friday’s debt ceiling meeting between himself, Biden, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was mutually agreed upon, in part, because McConnell had to attend a funeral. That would have been the third time the president and McCarthy had sat down over the debt limit since February after the country maxed out its $31.4 trillion borrowing capacity a month earlier. Staff have continued discussions in the interim.

“I don’t think there’s enough progress for the leaders to get back together,” McCarthy told reporters Thursday. “I don’t know having certain ones in the room, that it’s even productive.”

“If this were staff meetings happening on Feb. 1, I would call them productive,” he said. “When you’re sitting here with a few 15 days to go, it really seems to me that the president finally felt the pressure for 100 days of not having a meeting with me.”

The White House did not respond to an inquiry into whether it regrets its debt ceiling negotiation strategy, though press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre bristled at the use of that word during Friday’s briefing before the “big four” reconvenes “early next week.” Administration and Republican staff, some of whom have reportedly expressed concerns about the number of people involved, have not spoken about how to clear a bill through Congress. But they have reviewed the House GOP’s Limit, Save, Grow Act and talked about spending caps, unspent COVID-19 funds, and permitting reform as conservatives seek to reduce discretionary, nondefense spending by more than $100 billion.

“This is a positive development,” a White House source said. “Meetings are progressing. Staff is continuing to meet and it wasn’t the right moment to bring it back to principals.”

Simultaneously, the White House has ramped up its criticism of McCarthy, Schumer has circulated a Dear Colleague letter imploring Republicans to “take default off the table,” and the Republican Main Street Caucus has reminded Biden a clean debt ceiling measure is unlikely. Also on Thursday, Heather Boushey, a member of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers, briefed House Democrats that the administration has been told the country’s credit rating would be downgraded if it gets “too close” to a default as was the case in 2011.

Jean-Pierre said Friday staff will “meet today and over the weekend,” with debt ceiling negotiations so far covering “how Congress should get back to regular order, having those appropriations conversation, having the conversation on budget.”

“That is what the president said he is willing to do,” she added. “This should have happened a while ago… This should have been taken care of by Congress, as their constitutional duty, a while back. This is not a normal place for us to be, to have House Republicans hold our economy hostage. That is not the norm.”

Biden has previewed the idea of him participating in the Group of Seven leaders conference in Japan and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue counterpart in Australia online as it could take up to two weeks to push debt ceiling legislation through the House and Senate.

“Depending on the state of play in the negotiations, it’s possible I would either have to delay my trip — not delay — not go and do it virtually,” he told reporters in New York.

The debt ceiling negotiations are crescendoing after former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, encouraged GOP lawmakers to default if Biden does not agree to decrease spending.

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“I say to the Republicans out there — congressman, senators — if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default,” Trump told CNN. “I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave, will absolutely cave because you don’t want to have that happen, but it’s better than what we’re doing right now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors.”

“You might as well do it now because you’ll do it later because we have to save this country,” he said. “It’s really psychological more than anything else. And it could be very bad. It could be, maybe, nothing. Maybe it’s — you have a bad week or a bad day, but, look, you have to cut your costs.”

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