White House singles out McCarthy in debt ceiling talks
Naomi Lim
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The White House appears to be driving a wedge between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) amid debt ceiling negotiations.
“We cannot have a default and, I’m going to be very clear and you’ve heard this from other leaders as well, is that three of the four have said that we have to avoid a default,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Friday. “They’ve been very clear that we have to take a default off the table. I will let you guess who was the fourth that did not say that.”
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“It’s the speaker that needs to really answer this question,” Jean-Pierre said later during her briefing.
After the first meeting at the White House this week among President Joe Biden, McCarthy, and McConnell, in addition to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), McConnell joined McCarthy for a post-talks press conference outside the West Wing before leaving the media opportunity halfway through.
Friday’s follow-up meeting was postponed, in part, because McConnell had to attend a funeral, but McCarthy described continued staff-to-staff discussions as behind schedule based on Treasury Department and Congressional Budget Office projections the federal government will not have enough cash on hand nor can it rely on accounting gimmicks to pay its bills after June 1.
“I don’t think there’s enough progress for the leaders to get back together,” McCarthy told reporters Thursday. “I don’t know [if] having certain ones in the room that it’s even productive.”
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On Wednesday, Biden said that “the tenor of the meeting” with “three of the four participants” was “very measured and low key.”
“Occasionally, there would be a little bit of an assertion that maybe was a little over the top from the speaker,” he added.