(CNN) The countdown is on, the stakes are high — and there’s still no debt ceiling deal.
President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy They will meet again on MondayAfter a weekend, there has been a significant lack of progress in efforts to reach a deal to avoid defaulting on the country’s first debt.
Negotiations between the White House and the House GOP have broken down and adjourned on Friday, and representatives from each side spent the next two days defending their own positions and criticizing the other.
In a sign of a possible shore-up, Biden and McCarthy spoke by phone while the president was on Air Force One and then returned to Washington. A short trip to Japan. McCarthy told reporters Sunday that the call was “productive.” But after Biden lashed out at Republicans at a news conference in Hiroshima, he said he could not assure fellow world leaders gathered at the Group of Seven talks that the United States would not default.
“I can’t guarantee they won’t force default by doing something bad,” Biden said shortly before departing for the United States.
It’s not unusual for high-stakes negotiations on Capitol Hill to hit a setback and then rebound, but the challenge of finding consensus between the two sides lingered over the weekend as there were key sticking points.
Time is running out to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, and the U.S. could default on June 1. The Treasury Department has warned, a position Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reiterated on Sunday. If lawmakers and the White House can’t reach a deal, global economic disaster could be triggered.
Chronology of Congress
On Sunday, McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol, Louisiana’s GOP delegation. Garrett Graves and Patrick McHenry of North Carolina will reopen the conversation with White House staff “so we can actually conduct what we’re talking about.”
If a deal is reached, there will be even bigger challenges to successfully pass it in the House and Senate.
Legislative text must be written, which can be a difficult and complex task as lawmakers and staff dive into the nitty-gritty policy details — and it can lead to more complications in the fine print.
Leaders of both parties must get the votes to pass a bill, no small task with narrow majorities in both chambers.
After all, there is an ever-decreasing number of days on the calendar before June 1st.
McCarthy said it would take four days to pass the legislation. In the Senate, opponents of a treaty can cause a multi-day delay through a filibuster. But both chambers are capable of accelerating deadlines when needed.
Key sticking points and potential areas of consensus
House Republicans expect spending cuts in the federal budget in exchange for their support for raising the debt ceiling. On Sunday, Biden acknowledged a “significant” disagreement with Republicans, insisting that while he is willing to cut spending, the tax is “not on the revenue table” as part of the deal.
Graves, who is leading GOP negotiations on the debt ceiling, outlined four areas earlier this month where he thought a deal might be possible: overhauling the approval process, returning unspent Covid relief funds, raising work requirements for some government assistance programs and curbing spending.
Republicans have long insisted they won’t raise the debt limit without cutting spending, but Democrats have been wary of the cuts Republicans want.
Sources familiar with White House thinking acknowledged that one reason for the temporary breakdown in talks on Friday was that White House negotiators deemed the level of House Republicans’ spending cuts unacceptable, although the White House expressed willingness to cut. Some expenses.
A budget proposal submitted over the weekend by GOP negotiators would set budget limits for six years, with a budget similar to the House-passed bill in fiscal year 2022, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
The proposal includes at least two items that were not part of their initial bill: additional changes to immigration provisions and work requirements for food stamps, the source said.
Much of what Republicans have proposed is “simply, frankly, unacceptable,” Biden said Sunday.
Changes in job requirements have become a contentious issue. Some Democrats have expressed concern about Republicans’ proposed expansion of work requirements for Social Safety Net programs, with some leading Democrats suggesting that adding the requirements is a red line in the negotiations. Biden has told He will not put consequential job requirements on the table for negotiations.
Democrats are pushing to extend the debt ceiling for at least two more years so they don’t have to wrestle with the issue again before the 2024 election. The length of the extension, like most items that are part of the talks, has not been finalized, a source familiar with the matter said.
CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Betsy Klein, Melanie Zanona, Phil Mattingly, Arlette Saenz, Maegan Vazquez and Jeremy Diamond contributed to this report.
