Talks initially seemed to hit a roadblock on Friday, as Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) claimed the White House failed to meet the Republicans where they wanted on spending cuts.
“We’ve got to get movement by the White House, and we don’t have any movement yet. So, yeah, we’ve gotta pause,” McCarthy said.
“Yesterday I really felt we were at the location where I could see the path. The White House is just — look, we can’t be spending more money next year. We have to spend less than we spent the year before. It’s pretty easy.”
But things appeared to take a turn just hours later as close allies of the Speaker signaled talks were back on.
“At the Speaker’s request we’re going back in and we’re gonna keep talking,” Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) told reporters Friday.
Congress has less than two weeks until a June 1 deadline forecasted by the Treasury Department as the earliest date the nation risks federal default if lawmakers fail to act on the debt limit.
McCarthy had previously hoped on Thursday that both sides would reach “agreement, especially in principle, by sometime this weekend.”
But tensions are escalating on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers on both sides have dug in their heels amid bipartisan talks between party leaders aimed at finding common ground.
On Friday, dozens of progressives signed onto a letter urging Biden to invoke the 14th Amendment and bypass Republicans to prevent the nation from defaulting on its debt.
However, there are serious questions about the legality of such a move. And the stakes are high, as experts warn the nation’s economy could face catastrophic consequences if lawmakers fail to act quickly on the debt limit.
A day before the progressives’ letter, the House Freedom Caucus also pushed the Senate to pass the GOP conference’s partisan debt limit package, with the group calling for “no further discussion” until it makes it out of Congress.
