President Biden speaks in New York on Jan. 31, 2023. (Edwin J. Torres/NJ Governor’s Office)
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy huddled behind closed doors at the White House on Wednesday in the first of what will likely be several conversations as the country approaches two fiscal cliffs this year amid divided government.
The top issue at the moment is when and how to address the nation’s borrowing ceiling, known as the debt limit, ahead of an expected summer deadline.
Biden has remained adamant he won’t negotiate with Republicans on the debt ceiling and that talks about government spending need to move on a separate track.
But the two issues are linked for McCarthy and many in the Republican Party, who want to see an agreement about spending cuts before they vote to address the debt limit, which provides borrowing authority for spending Congress already approved.
“I was very clear that we’re not passing a clean debt ceiling. We’re not spending more next year than we spent this year,” McCarthy told reporters following the meeting, linking the two separate issues of debt limit and government spending.
U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy answers questions from reporters at the U.S. Capitol about debt limit talks at the White House, on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023. Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom
‘Productive conversation’
McCarthy said he would like to get to a place where House Republicans and Democrats, who control the Senate and the White House, know what they’re going to spend during the next two fiscal years.
McCarthy said he didn’t want to give any “misimpression” on the meeting with Biden, which lasted a little over an hour, but said the talk was better than he thought it was going to be.
“I thought this was a very productive conversation,” McCarthy said. “Now, you know, in all these different things, if you had a productive conversation, and you both walked out saying, ‘Let’s continue it,’ that’s a positive for today.”
Biden called McCarthy “a decent man” during a fundraising event Tuesday evening in New York City, though he questioned the deals McCarthy struck to hold the speaker’s gavel. There were 15 ballots before McCarthy was elected.
“Look what he had to do,” Biden said. “He had to make commitments that are just absolutely off the wall for a speaker of the House to make in terms of being able to become the leader.”
A White House “readout” of the meeting said Biden and McCarthy “had a frank and straightforward dialogue.”
“The President welcomes a separate discussion with congressional leaders about how to reduce the deficit and control the national debt while continuing to grow the economy. This conversation should build on the President’s leadership in delivering a record $1.7 trillion in deficit reduction in his first two years in office.” Read more
