US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaks to reporters with US Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) by his side following debt ceiling talks at the White House in Washington , US, May 9, 2023.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
The on-again, off-again deliberations on Capitol Hill surrounding the debt ceiling are back again, as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters Saturday that Republicans will resume negotiations only when President Joe Biden returns from at the Group of Seven Summit in Japan.
“Unfortunately, the White House has moved backwards,” McCarthy said of the current deliberations surrounding the debt ceiling. “I think we will not move forward until the president returns to the country,” he added.
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On Saturday night, the Biden administration objected that Republicans who on Friday made a debt ceiling offer “a big step backwards,” insisting that the proposal contains “extremely partisan demands that will never pass both Houses of Congress.”
“It is only a Republican leadership dependent on its MAGA wing – not the President or Democratic leadership – that is threatening to put our country into default for the first time in our history unless extreme partisan demands are met,” according to a statement by Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Biden is scheduled come back in Washington, DC, from the G-7 summit on Sunday. The President said in a press conference from the summit that he was “not really” concerned about the negotiations and believed that “we can avoid a default and we can get something decent done.”
McCarthy’s announcement that talks have been paused again, at least for now, is the latest hurdle facing the debate in Congress over what to do with the pending debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has identified June 1 as the earliest date by which the United States could run out of money to pay the debts the government has already incurred.
Any deal to raise or suspend the debt limit would have to pass both the GOP-led House and the Democratic-controlled Senate, and key lawmakers in both parties have acknowledged that hardliners may find the final bill unacceptable. in compromise.
High-stakes talks on raising the debt limit resumed at the Capitol Friday night, hours after they were paused at noon when Republican negotiators walked out of the room, blaming the White House for going through of discussions.
