The president of the United States, Joe Biden, confirmed on Monday that he will meet this Tuesday with the leaders of the Republican opposition in Congress, including the head of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, in the search for prevent the country from defaulting.
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The Democratic president, at the end of a family lunch in the city of Philadelphia, responded affirmatively to the journalists who asked him about holding this meeting on the public debt.
The United States exceeded its borrowing limit and the government hopes that Congress raises or lifts that ceiling in order to continue honoring the commitments assumed by the country and thus avoid an unprecedented moratorium.
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Biden, McCarthy and three other congressional leaders had originally planned to meet last Friday, after a first round of talks with no progress on May 9.
But the appointment was postponed, although the negotiations continued. “I remain an optimist because I am a congenital optimist, but I really think there is a desire on both their part and ours to come to an agreement. I think we’ll be able to do it,” he told reporters during a bike ride near his Delaware home on Sunday.
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Biden on budget talks and the debt ceiling standoff, with his next McCarthy meeting set for Tuesday: “I really think there’s a desire on their part as well as ours to reach an agreement and I think we’ll be able to do it.” pic.twitter.com/6Z06dTTBSf
— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) May 14, 2023
The White House has also said that for the time being the US president is still scheduled to leave Wednesday for a diplomatic tour of Asia and the Pacific, which was in doubt before the struggle for debt.
But McCarthy noted that the two parties still have a lot to work out. “I think our positions are still very far apart. It doesn’t seem to me that (the White House and the Democrats) want an agreement,” he told reporters.
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Republicans refuse to raise the debt “ceiling” as long as Biden does not agree to make significant cuts in public spending. Without an agreement, the United States could find itself in default from early June, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recalled on Friday.
AFP
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