WASHINGTON — Hours before House Speaker Kevin McCarthy meets with President Joe Biden to discuss the approaching U.S. debt ceiling crisis, he’ll preside over a closed-door session with fellow Republicans to discuss strategy.
The House GOP has demanded spending reductions in exchange for lifting the debt limit, but has yet to make specific proposals.
“It’ll be an opportunity for us to debate ideas and come to the room and have this discussion,” said Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican. “There are a number of — as you can imagine — there are different factions within our party that have different ideas.”
Biden plans to ask McCarthy for his plan at the meeting but Republicans are still devising budget cuts and other demands they’ll seek in exchange for averting a market-rattling payments default.
McCarthy indicated Monday he plans to use the meeting to assess Biden’s position rather than present an offer from his caucus. The White House has called raising the debt ceiling a national obligation and has said Biden would not negotiate on the ceiling.
“Right now the president says he doesn’t want to talk about anything. I want to see where he’s at,” McCarthy said. “I think it’s irresponsible and irrational the position he’s taken and I hope he doesn’t stay with it.”
The GOP will meet at 9 a.m. More details on the House GOP negotiating positions could be leaked to the media at that time.
McCarthy has said that reductions in Social Security and Medicare should be “off the table.” But, the California Republican has said, all other spending, including the defense budget, should be reviewed for waste. McCarthy has said the U.S. will not default.
Mace is pushing a so-called penny plan that would shave off a small portion of federal spending on discretionary programs across the board. Other more moderate members of her conference have floated indexing discretionary spending to inflation or eliminating a fixed debt limit and instead calculating the ceiling as a percentage of gross domestic product.
Mace said it’s “not going to be easy,” but it is possible to come to an agreement without Social Security and Medicare. “It’d be great it we could do cuts across the board, but that’s not realistic,” she added. “So you have to be more targeted with the cuts.”
By law, the federal government’s debt cannot exceed $31.4 trillion, a cap that was reached on Jan. 19. The U.S. Treasury has said it can hold out at least through early June by using special accounting maneuvers, but may default on payment obligations any time after that if the limit isn’t raised.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a recent Bloomberg interview that failing to raise the ceiling would be “a calamity.”
The budget and the debt ceiling are two separate issues that have been linked by conservatives who have used a default to extract spending cuts.
Biden plans to detail his budget vision on March 9, but Republicans could take longer to release their position. Republican leaders note the deadline for a House budget is mid-April.
