WASHINGTON – House Republicans reached a tentative deal with the White House on Saturday night to raise the country’s borrowing limit and avoid a catastrophic default on US Treasuries.
“We have reached a deal in principle,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said at the Capitol on Saturday. “We still have a lot of work to do, but I believe this is a valuable deal in principle for the American people.”
McCarthy said he spoke twice with President Joe Biden on Saturday about the plan. The California Republican said, “We’ve finished drafting the bill, we’ve reviewed it with the White House, and we’re going to talk to the president again tomorrow afternoon,” the California Republican said. It’s planned,” he said.
The deal, he said, “includes historic spending cuts, consequential reforms that lift citizens out of poverty into the labor force, and curbs government overreach. No,’ he said.
Biden called the deal “an important step forward in protecting critical programs for workers and cutting spending while growing the economy for all.”
He also provided a preview of the White House’s arguments against House Democrats reluctant to support a bill that ostensibly is a Republican victory. In short, it could have been worse.
“This deal protects my and Congressional Democrats’ important priorities and legislative accomplishments,” Biden said, adding, “It represents a compromise and everyone can get what they want. I can’t,” he added.
The White House invited all House Democrats to a virtual briefing on Sunday afternoon, presumably to explain the deal and encourage Democrats to vote for it.
The announcement marks the beginning of a lobbying effort by both House and Senate leaders to persuade lawmakers to vote in favor of the bill, the Republican-majority House and Democrats seeking to raise the nation’s debt. must win enough votes in the Senate, where Set caps to meet the June 5th deadline.
At least one senator, Utah Republican Mike Lee, has already used procedural bargaining in the Senate to threaten to delay the bill for as long as possible if he doesn’t like what it says. there is
In the House, a group of 35 ultraconservatives publicly pressured McCarthy to “hold the line” by demanding more concessions from Democrats. They also said they would not support a deal that they thought would cost too much.
A vote to raise the debt ceiling does not authorize additional government spending. It simply allows the Treasury Department to carry out duties already approved by Congress in the past, some of them decades ago.
Nevertheless, many Republicans have come to see the biennial debt ceiling vote as an opportunity to extract concessions from Democrats in exchange for a vote to avoid default.
This time was no exception. Republicans urge the White House to agree to a bill that, at a minimum, includes baseline government spending cuts, new welfare work requirements, energy permit reform, and cancellation of unused COVID-19 emergency funds. bottom.
The final push to the deal came on Saturday, despite the Treasury Department’s latest guidance on Friday afternoon setting a June 5 deadline for default.
This is five days later than the June 1 date of the previous Treasury guidance. Some lawmakers took the update to mean less pressure on negotiators as the dates could slide again.
But the Republican negotiator, Rep. Patrick McHenry (North Carolina), has a different interpretation.Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen praised as ‘a woman of principles’ [who] McHenry told reporters on Friday that the new date put an end to deep-seated questions about when a default would occur, saying: “Now we know. There is pressure,” he said.
Yellen said the agency “will make payments and transfers of an estimated $130 billion” in the first two days of June. That would “reduce Treasury resources to very low levels.”
In an open letter to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Yellen said the Treasury Department would owe an “estimated $92 billion in payments and remittances” during the week of June 5.
Unless the debt ceiling is raised in time and the government is allowed to borrow more, “our projected financial resources will not be sufficient to meet all these obligations.”
This is breaking news. Check ack for updates.
