Republicans Report Progress in Debt Limit Talks as Negotiations Continue
Republican congressional leaders said Thursday they were making progress toward a deal with President Biden to raise the debt ceiling while cutting spending, warning that a deal that is still falling apart would inevitably strain both parties. will frustrate the legislators of
Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol that negotiators had worked “well past midnight” and resumed talks later Thursday morning, ahead of an expected June 1 deadline to avert a default on the country’s debt. Tried to find a resolution. He said there were still “outstanding issues” and instructed his negotiators to work “24/7” until an agreement was reached.
“I don’t think everybody is going to be happy at the end of the day,” Mr. McCarthy said, nodding to growing concerns among some hard-right Republicans that his party was making too many concessions in the negotiations. “That’s not how the system works.”
Democrats were also growing anxious that Mr. Biden would go too far in giving in to Republican demands, including spending cuts and tougher work requirements on public benefit programs. They gathered at the Capitol in the afternoon to discuss the status of negotiations.
Lawmakers were preparing to leave Washington for the Memorial Day holiday later Thursday, but talks were expected to continue into the weekend and members of Congress were calling for a recall and vote. If an agreement is reached.
Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina, one of Mr. McCarthy’s chief negotiators, said there were still “thorny issues” that remained to be resolved, chief among them the spending caps, which He admitted that those were “hard things” for Democrats to accept.
“We have legislative work to do, policy work to do,” Mr. McHenry said. “The details of all of these things are really the result of us being able to achieve this.”
“We don’t have a deal yet, and so until we have a deal, I don’t think we’ll know what the coalition is going to look like to get it passed,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota. will come”. McCarthy Allies. But listen, Kevin McCarthy understands how conservative his conference is. He is going to make a deal that a majority of his conference will accept.
As negotiators edged closer to a deal, hard-right Republicans openly expressed concern that Mr. McCarthy would sign a compromise they saw as insufficiently conservative. Many right-wing Republicans have already vowed to oppose any compromise that reverses the cuts that were part of their debt ceiling bill, which cut household spending by an average of 18 percent over a decade. will decrease.
“Republicans shouldn’t make a bad deal,” Rep. Chip Roy, an influential Texas conservative, wrote on Twitter shortly after telling a local radio station that “I need to have some blunt conversations with my colleagues and leadership.” team” because he didn’t like “the direction they were going.”
Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina said he was reserving a decision on how to vote on the compromise until he saw the bill, but added, “What I’ve seen right now is good. do not have.”
Former President Donald J. Trump, who has said Republicans should force a default if they don’t get what they want in negotiations, also weighed in. “It only came on for a second,” said the speaker. “He was talking about, ‘Make sure you get a good deal.’
After playing a tee shot on his golf course outside Washington, Mr. Trump approached a New York Times reporter, iPhone in hand, and showed the call with Mr. McCarthy.
“It’s going to be an interesting thing — it’s not going to be easy,” said Mr Trump, who described his call with the speaker as a “little, quick chat”.
“They’ve spent three years wasting money on nonsense,” he said, adding, “Republicans don’t want to see that, so I understand where they are.”
Luke Broadwater And Stephanie Lai. Contributed to reporting from Washington, and Alan Blinder From Sterling, Va