President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met face-to-face Wednesday for more than an hour of highly anticipated spending talks.
The US hit the debt ceiling set by Congress on Thursday, forcing the Treasury Department to start taking extraordinary measures to keep the government open.
The House speaker arrived for the afternoon session carrying no formal GOP budget proposal, but he is laden with the promises he made to far-right and other conservative Republican lawmakers during his difficult campaign to become House speaker. He vowed then to work to return federal spending to 2022 levels - an 8% reduction. He also promised to take steps to balance the budget within the decade - an ambitious, if politically unattainable goal.
"For days, Speaker McCarthy has heralded this sitdown as some kind of major win in his debt ceiling talks," Schumer said. But he added, "Speaker McCarthy showing up at the White House without a plan is like sitting down at the table without cards in your hand." Still, McConnell is doing his part to influence the process from afar, and nudging Biden to negotiate.
Agreeing on the size and scope of the GOP's proposed cuts will be a tall order for McCarthy as he struggles to build consensus within his narrow House Republican majority and bridge the divide between his conservative and far-right wings of the party.
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