President Biden and the top four leaders in Congress, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), walked out of their Tuesday meeting without a path forward to keep the nation from defaulting on its debts.
The president’s meeting with McCarthy, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (DN.Y.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ( R-Ky.) came just over a week after Treasury Department Secretary Janet Yellen told lawmakers the U.S. could default on June 1.
The leaders spoke for about an hour, and while McCarthy came out afterward to say there was no movement on the issue in the Oval Office, the president struck a more upbeat tone.
Here are five takeaways from Tuesday’s meeting.
Biden considers the 14th amendment
Biden confirmed in remarks from the Roosevelt Room after the meeting that he has been “thinking” about invoking the 14th Amendment as a way to unilaterally fix the debt ceiling.
But the president acknowledged that it would not be a viable solution in the short term, noting that it would have to work its way through the courts to find out if it is viable.
“And meanwhile, without an extension, it would still end up in the same place,” added the president.
The idea is based on a clause in the 14th amendment that says the public debt “shall not be questioned.”
Yellen said Sunday that using the 14th Amendment could lead to a “constitutional crisis” and others have warned it could roil financial markets.
McCarthy, meanwhile, opposed the president’s idea using the 14th amendment.
Biden is open to using unspent COVID-19 funds
Biden also highlighted the option of rescinding unspent COVID-19 relief funds as an area where he and lawmakers can agree to make some spending cuts.
“I would take a good look at it, because … we don’t need it all. But the questions are what obligations were made, commitments made, money not disbursed, etc.,” Biden told reporters when asked if he would consider taking back funds , even independent of the debt limit discussions.
House Republicans have approved legislation that would raise the debt ceiling and limit government funding to fiscal 2022 levels, all with the goal of curbing spending, and includes provisions such as clawback of unspent COVID money.
The president has rejected other GOP efforts to cut spending that his administration has already passed through the Inflation Reduction Act, which caps health care costs and includes funding to fight climate change.
McCarthy says there is no new movement
McCarthy emerged from the White House signaling the sides that each deepened their existing positions.
“Everyone in this meeting reiterated the positions they were in. I didn’t see any new movement,” McCarthy said.
Biden, for his part, described the talks as “productive”. Similarly, Jeffries said everyone agreed that “we should move forward with real conversations.”
Biden and White House officials have insisted that Congress raise the debt ceiling without conditions, pointing to decades of precedent under Democratic and Republican administrations. GOP officials have been adamant that spending cuts should be part of any discussion about raising the debt limit.
The lack of tangible progress led to frustration from others on Capitol Hill.
“For five of our country’s political leaders to walk out of the meeting and not one of them say we’ve made progress?” Sen. Joe Manchin (DW.Va.) said. “Ridiculous.”
Leaders meeting on Friday
Biden and McCarthy said they had ordered staff members to come together for the next 48 hours to find a way forward, and that the president and congressional leaders would meet again on Friday.
“One of the ways that senators or congressmen can roll back some of the things that they’ve done is if they give their staff some leeway,” Biden said.
Jeffries described Friday’s upcoming meeting as reason to be optimistic. He told reporters they had “an honest and frank discussion about a way forward” and that his teams would meet in the coming days to continue talks.
Biden and McCarthy had not met to discuss the debt limit since February 1. The president criticized the president after Tuesday’s meeting for not inviting him to talks earlier, while the president argued that he extended the invitation after the House passed his bill to avoid default.
In addition, McCarthy said a staff-level discussion had preceded Tuesday’s meeting, which he had requested from Biden but did not make public.
Legislators do not want defect
One of the developments Biden cited as progress was an agreement reached at the meeting to take the possibility of allowing a default to occur off the table, with leaders understanding the risks of blowing off the 1 june
“Yes, there was substantial movement in the sense that everyone agreed that … debt default is off the table,” the president said.
But he also alluded to that agreement being between three of the leaders, a contingency that did not include McCarthy.
McConnell’s main takeaway after the meeting was that the US “is not going to default,” but he said Biden and McCarthy must agree on a solution. Additionally, Schumer later told reporters that Democrats in the room asked the president “to remove the default table.”
Even so, the day concluded with one side largely blaming the other for stalled talks.
Mychael Schnell and Emily Brooks contributed.
