Kevin McCarthy
are willing to allow talks to fail, thereby pitching the US and world economies into chaos, seeing it as a price worth paying for beating Biden at the polls next year. Biden has said he will consider spending cuts but has called Republican demands “unacceptable”, for example saying he will not back subsidies for big energy companies and “wealthy tax cheats” while putting at risk healthcare and food assistance.On Sunday, arriving at the White House after attending the G7 summit in Japan, Biden told reporters a conversation with McCarthy from Air Force One “went well”.
The debt ceiling was imposed in 1917, a response by Congress to US entry into the first world war. For most of the next 100 years, raising the ceiling was a formal process, if often subject to political grandstanding. On Sunday the lead Republican negotiator, Garret Graves of Louisiana, told reporters: “A red line is spending less money. And unless and until we’re there, the rest of it is really irrelevant.”
Republicans control the House 222-213, while Democrats hold the Senate 51-49, making it tough to secure votes for any bipartisan deal.