The White House negotiating team arrived at the US Capitol early Monday as talks on raising the debt limit stretch into the final days before a default.
President Joe Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are set to meet later Monday after negotiations whipsawed between progress and deadlock.
The leaders’ hand-picked negotiators met for more than two hours Sunday evening in McCarthy’s office at the Capitol but did not discuss the status of those discussions with reporters.
House Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry, a negotiator for McCarthy, struck an optimistic tone early Monday, telling reporters that a call yesterday between Biden and the GOP speaker was “productive” and helped to restart talks.
“It got us back in the room together,” McHenry said. “We have a sort of updated sense of our realities. We know the deadline. Both sides are working in good faith, but we’ve got tough issues.”
Biden and McCarthy will meet later today for talks designed to avert a catastrophic default, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying the US could run out of funds to pay its bills as early as June 1.
The two sides remain far apart on issues that include the level and length of caps on discretionary spending, the terms of a faster permitting process for energy projects and whether to include work requirements for beneficiaries of Medicaid, food stamps, and cash assistance programs.
