Biden releases debt ceiling memo with two questions for McCarthy ahead of meeting
Haisten Willis
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The White House has released a memo ahead of President Joe Biden‘s meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) setting expectations for their debt ceiling showdown.
Included in the four-page memorandum, which was released Tuesday morning, are two questions for McCarthy and several talking points about Biden’s fiscal policies.
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The two questions are, “Will the speaker commit to the bedrock principle that the United States will never default on its financial obligations?” and “When will Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans release their budget?”
Biden and McCarthy are meeting today to discuss the debt ceiling, and both sides are posturing to press their favored priorities ahead of the talks.
The president will release a budget on March 9, per the memo, and he challenged McCarthy to do the same. He also said McCarthy has so far been unwilling to commit to avoiding default, which Biden said makes the speaker “an outlier.”
The White House memo also raised long-standing challenges about Republicans cutting Medicare and Social Security and accused the GOP of supporting policies that would raise the national debt.
The debt ceiling reached its limit on Jan. 19, with House Republicans aiming to cut down on spending to address the situation.
“I want to find a reasonable and a responsible way that we can lift the debt ceiling, but take control of this runaway spending,” McCarthy said on CBS over the weekend. “If you look at the last four years, the Democrats have increased spending by 30%, $400 billion. We’re at 120% of GDP. We haven’t been in this place to debt since World War II, so we can’t continue down this path.”
McCarthy assured that Medicare and Social Security would not experience any reductions from the House, saying they are both “off the table.” The California Republican said he intends to make sure the United States’s defense spending is protected, but he also wants to “look at every dollar no matter where it’s being spent.”
When asked if Congress would support a debt limit extension from June to September of this year, McCarthy failed to give a direct answer. Instead, McCarthy said he would “rather sit down with the president” and “have those discussions.”
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The meeting will take place on Wednesday.
“Any serious conversation about economic and fiscal policy needs to start with a clear understanding of the participants’ goals and proposals,” the White House memo said. “Speaker McCarthy and his caucus need to transparently lay out to the American people their fiscal and economic proposals in the normal budget process.”