US President Joe Biden has called House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to a meeting at the White House, after he refused for months to negotiate raising the debt ceiling in exchange for federal spending cuts.
The White House announced that Biden also invited the leader of the Democratic minority in the House of Representatives, Hakim Jafri, and the leaders of the Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, to the same meeting on the ninth of May, while his spokeswoman Karen Jean-Pierre confirmed that he would not negotiate with the Republicans to raise the debt ceiling. .
White House spokeswoman Karen Jean-Pierre said this should be done without conditions because it is their constitutional duty to deal with the debt ceiling as they did three times with the last Republican president.
Similar positions have been expressed by Democratic senators such as Senator Richard Blumenthal, who said, “There has to be a negotiation. But first, there has to be an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. This debt is due, it’s inevitable.”
Biden’s call came after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned of running out of financial liquidity and defaulting the United States for the first time on paying its debts, starting from the beginning of June, if both chambers of Congress did not agree to pass a bill to raise the debt ceiling.
Yellen called on McCarthy, in a letter, to agree on a legislative formula that would be approved by both parties in Congress, in order to avoid a major economic disaster.
The expert on congressional affairs from the Kiplinger Foundation, Sean Lingle, said that the first institution that affects the pressure on the White House and Congress is the Treasury Department, when Janet Yellen recently stated that the debt limit may reach as early as the beginning of June, and this caused a reaction in Congress.
Biden had come under pressure from business groups to negotiate with McCarthy, after the House of Representatives narrowly approved a bill to raise the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling by an additional $1.5 trillion, in exchange for spending cuts of $4.5 trillion.
Lingle added that he thinks the fact that Biden has already asked McCarthy to come to the White House is a good sign. for the rich.”
Lingle stressed that the president will never force the middle class to bear the burden of that, and that the bill will not become law, calling on Republicans to move without conditions, in light of the Democrats’ control of the Senate, the bill does not have a chance to become law, and the president can veto it, While the Democrats call Republicans not to take the economy hostage.
Attention is now turning to the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, to play a role in concluding an agreement, as he did previously, although he insists this time that he will not come with a rescue plan, but some experts expect him to intervene at the last moments as a savior if all efforts fail.
