US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaks to reporters with US Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) by his side after debt limit talks at the White House in Washington, US, May 9 , 2023.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
The on-again, off-again deliberations on Capitol Hill surrounding the debt ceiling are repeated, as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters on Saturday Republicans will only continue negotiations if President Joe Biden returned from the Group of Seven Summit in Japan.
“Unfortunately, the White House has moved backwards,” McCarthy said of the current deliberations surrounding the debt ceiling. “I don’t think we can continue until the president returns to the country,” he added.
Biden is scheduled to return to Washington, DC, from the G-7 summit on Sunday. The president SAYS in a press conference from the summit that he is “not at all” worried about the negotiations and believes that “we will be able to avoid a default and we will do something decent.”
McCarthy’s revelation that talks are on hold again, at least for now, is the latest hurdle facing Congress’s debate over what to do with the pending debt ceiling. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen June 1 is noted as the earliest date on which the United States may run out of money to pay the debts already incurred by the government.
Any deal to raise or suspend the debt limit must pass the GOP-led House and Democratic-controlled Senate, and top lawmakers in both parties have acknowledged that the final compromise bill may not be acceptable. of the hardliners.
High-stakes talk about raising the debt limit continued at the Capitol on Friday night, hours after they were stopped at noon when Republican negotiators left the room, blaming the White House for holding the discussions.