Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) joins U.S. Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) after debt limit negotiations at the White House in Washington, U.S., May 9, 2023. Reporter speaks.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
As House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters Saturday, on-again, off-again deliberations on Capitol Hill over the debt ceiling have seen Republicans continue negotiations only after President Joe Biden returns from the G7 summit in Japan.
“Unfortunately, the White House has backtracked,” McCarthy said of the current deliberations surrounding the debt ceiling. “I don’t think we can make progress until the president is back in the country,” he added.
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Biden scheduled return From Sunday’s G7 summit to Washington DC.president explain In a news conference at the summit, he was “not at all” worried about the negotiations and believed “we will be able to avoid a default and we will get some decent things done.”
McCarthy revealed that talks were again on hold, at least for now, in the latest hurdle in a debate in Congress over how to deal with the pending debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has set June 1 as the earliest date the US could run out of money to pay off the debt the government has already taken on.
Any deal to raise or suspend the debt ceiling would need to pass the Republican-led House of Representatives and the Democratic-controlled Senate, with leading lawmakers in both parties acknowledging that the final compromise bill would likely be unpalatable to hardliners.
High-stakes talks on raising the debt ceiling resumed at the Capitol on Friday night, hours after Republican negotiators walked out of the room blaming the White House for stalling the discussions.