Senate Republican: It’s ‘stunning’ Biden hasn’t been willing to negotiate on debt ceiling

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said on Sunday that he finds it “stunning” that President Biden hasn’t been willing to negotiate with lawmakers on the debt ceiling as a deadline nears to avoid default.

During an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Lankford, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, noted that it’s been over three months since Biden has talked to lawmakers on the issue.

“Everyone knew this was coming. And the president’s refused to be able to negotiate about it,” Lankford told host George Stephanopoulos. “That’s been the most stunning part about this is, everyone knew it was coming. It’s time to be able to negotiate it.” 

“And even last week, when the Treasury secretary said, ‘Well, now the x day may be June the 1st,’ the president’s response was, ‘Well, maybe next week we should get together and talk about this,’ ” Lankford added. “It should have been the next day that they would actually sit down and be able to talk about it. So we’ve really been very surprised that the president has been unwilling to be able to negotiate and talk about this.” 

Lankford also told Stephanopoulos that he hopes Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) can find common ground in a meeting on Tuesday. 

“Everyone knows that there’s areas of waste in government. We should actually sit down and be able to talk about it and say, ‘What are the priorities? How are we going to spend on those priorities and to make sure that we’re realigning and not just saying what we’re spending now we need to just keep spreading and keep adding debt at the rate that we’re adding it?’ ” Lankford said. 

The Treasury Department began implementing extraordinary measures in January to prevent the government from defaulting on its debt.