White House not open to debt ceiling negotiations with ‘cruel’ Republicans
Haisten Willis
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The White House continues to insist it will not negotiate with House Republicans over the debt ceiling.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) unveiled a debt ceiling proposal last week, something President Joe Biden had repeatedly called for. But that won’t lead to a meeting, according to press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
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“The House Republican position is, unless the president and the Senate agree to their entire agenda, they are going to default and crash the economy,” Jean-Pierre said. “And that is dangerous.”
McCarthy released his long-awaited debt ceiling legislation last Wednesday, proposing to raise the debt ceiling over the next year either by $1.5 trillion or until March 31, 2024, whichever comes first. But the White House quickly dismissed it as dangerous, something Jean-Pierre repeated on Monday.
“We have been very clear,” she said. “There will not be any negotiation around the debt ceiling. This is something that is their constitutional duty to do. They’ve done it three times — you’ve heard me say it over and over again — three times during the last administration, and they should do it now.”
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Jean-Pierre later described the House Republican proposal as “cruel.”
McCarthy met with Biden in January to begin negotiations on the debt ceiling, but that meeting ended without a binding agreement because the White House maintained it would not discuss federal spending until the borrowing limit was lifted. McCarthy said he has not spoken with Biden since that initial meeting, accusing the president of “bumbling his way into the first default in our nation’s history.”
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