Washington, May 23 (AFP/APP):A top US Republican and President Joe Biden on Monday both said their first one-on-one talks in months to avert a calamitous debt default were “productive,” but that disagreements were still blocking any potential deal.
The White House meeting came after Biden returned from a trip to Asia early to hammer out an agreement ahead of the US Treasury’s June 1 cut off date for Congress to authorize more borrowing. “I felt we had a productive discussion.
We don’t have an agreement yet, but I did feel the discussion was productive in areas (where) we have differences of opinion,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said after the talks.
McCarthy told reporters that negotiators were going to “work through the night” to move the sides closer and that he and Biden would “talk every day to try to find a way to get this done.”
Debt limits are raised periodically to cover repayments on loans that have already been approved and spent, but House Republicans are insisting this time that averting a default must be paired with deep cuts to bring down the country’s $31.8 trillion debt.