President Biden’s trip across the globe in the middle of crucial debt ceiling talks will get cut short, in a sign debt talks have not progressed as quickly as he expected.
He will still leave for Japan to attend the G-7 summit on Wednesday – but will not be going to Australia and Papua New Guinea anymore, the White House said Tuesday.
Instead he’ll return home to hash out the details of raising the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing limit with congressional Republicans as the clock ticks down to June 1 – the potential X date when the Treasury could run out of funds to pay its bills.
Biden was set to speak to the Australian parliament, hold Quad meetings (Japan, India, Australia, U.S.) and send a message to China about the unity of allies.
The change to Biden’s itinerary came just as he sat down with congressional leaders to try to find a way to end the impasse for the second time.
‘Get a good picture of all of us. We’re having a wonderful time. Everything’s going well,’ Biden told reporters at the top of the meeting, without making substantive comments about the state of play.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Monday morning there had been ‘no progress’ in debt ceiling negotiations overnight, just hours before he was set to sit down with the president.
But after the meeting concluded, McCarthy said they are in ‘a better place.’
He said the president ‘changed the scope of who is negotiating’ and appointed two individuals from his team, Steve Ricchetti and OMB Director Shalanda Young, to work directly with the speaker’s staff – which McCarthy called much ‘improved.’
‘The structure of how we negotiate has improved, so it now gives us a better opportunity even though we only have a few days to get it done.’
He also said ‘it’s possible to get a deal by the end of the week,’ adding ‘it’s not that difficult to get to an agreement.’
President Biden’s trip across the globe in the middle of crucial debt ceiling talks may get cut short, the White House signaled Tuesday
Crunch time: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell met in the Oval Office with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the day before Biden is set to head off for the G7 in Japan
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed to reporters the White House is ‘re-evaluating’ the last two stops of the trip amid an impasse over the debt ceiling and said a decision will be made soon
Democrats Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries also spoke following the meeting, saying they remain ‘hopeful’ they can all come to an agreement.
Jeffries added it was a ‘positive meeting,’ and all parties involved agreed that default is not an ‘acceptable option’ and must be avoided.
The leaders did not shed any light on the exact negotiations, including whether work requirements would be included in any agreement.
A leadership source told DailyMail.com that Biden broke the news about his trip being shortened in the room with the ‘Big Four.’
The first hint that Biden’s trip was on the rocks came when National Security Spokesman John Kirby described the agenda for Biden’s trip to Japan – which he said would include meetings with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. All members of the ‘Quad’ will already be in Japan.
Kirby left virtually no doubt that Biden would still travel to Japan on Wednesday.
He also was asked if Biden would apologize for the U.S. dropping an atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II in 1945, something President Obama declined to do on his trip to Hiroshima during his tenure.
Biden ‘plans to visit the memorial and to pay his respects to the lives of the innocents who were killed in the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima,’ Kirby said.
There is one personnel change for Tuesday’s meeting: Vice President Kamala Harris is there.
‘She she’s been consulted on multiple times on the budget on preventing default. This is something that – the President clearly respects her view and this meeting. He wants her to be consulted,’ said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
‘There’s no progress that I see,’ McCarthy told reporters of the staff-level talks that went through the weekend. ‘And it really concerns me with the timeline of where we are.’
The Treasury Department reiterated Monday that they still believe the day the nation could run out of funds to pay its bills could be as soon as June 1.
Majority Leader Steve Scalise expressed a similar level of pessimism: ‘I’m not even sure their negotiations continue.’
Biden and the ‘Big Four,’ McCarthy, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell had their second meeting at the White House Tuesday 3 p.m.
They had originally been slated to meet again on Friday, but those talks were canceled after not enough staff progress had been made throughout the week, according to McCarthy.
Meanwhile over on Capitol Hill, protests erupted in the Cannon House office building as activists chanted ‘no cuts to Medicaid’ – referring to the Republican plan to impose work requirements on welfare.
‘It doesn’t seem to me yet they want a deal, it just seems like they want to look like they are in a meeting but they aren’t talking anything serious,’ McCarthy told reporters Monday morning
And just 16 days before June 1, Biden and McCarthy are at odds even over how they believe debt ceiling negotiations are progressing.
‘I really think there’s a desire on their part, as well as ours, to reach an agreement, and I think we’ll be able to do it,’ an optimistic Biden told reporters on Sunday in Delaware.
‘I remain optimistic because I’m a congenital optimist.’
Biden refused to detail the status of talks. ‘I’ve learned a long time ago, and you know as well as I do: It never is good to characterize a negotiation in the middle of a negotiation,’ he said.
McCarthy characterized the talks as ‘still far apart.’
‘It doesn’t seem to me yet they want a deal, it just seems like they want to look like they are in a meeting but they aren’t talking anything serious,’ he told reporters Monday morning.
Majority Whip Tom Emmer said he hoped Biden has been ‘doing his homework’ ahead of the meeting.
‘I hope he has been coming up with other ideas or he’s going to support our idea. Those should be the only two choices. If the President goes into that meeting today, if he gives more empty rhetoric like he has in the past meetings that will show you he’s not serious. I hope he’s serious, because we’ve been serious a long time.’
‘I really think there’s a desire on their part, as well as ours, to reach an agreement, and I think we’ll be able to do it,’ an optimistic Biden told reporters on Sunday in Delaware
‘Seems like they want a default more than a deal,’ the speaker said, adding they need a deal by ‘this weekend’ in order ‘to have a timeline to be able to pass it in both houses.’
In a surprise development over the weekend, Biden expressed an openness to tougher work requirements for welfare programs, a top priority in the House GOP’s debt limit bill.
Biden said that he’d voted for the ‘tougher work requirements’ as a senator in the past but ‘for Medicaid it’s a different story, so I’m waiting to hear exactly what their proposal is.’
The House Republicans’ debt limit bill, the Limit, Save Grow Act, included stricter work requirements for Medicaid, SNAP and TANF.
Biden has also seemed open to clawing back unspent Covid-19 funds, estimated to amount to between $50 billion and $70 billion. He’s reprtedly open to discretionary spending craps through the remainder of his term.
In exchange, Biden is demanding Republicans drop their attempt to roll back his key legislative accomplishments, including student debt relief, limit spending caps to two years and increase the debt ceiling at least through the 2024 election.
Biden’s openness to work requirements enraged progressives.
‘We did not elect Joe Biden of 1986,’ Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., chair of the Progressive Caucus, told Politico. ‘We elected Joe Biden of 2020.’
She called adding new work requirements for SNAP an ‘absolutely terrible idea’ and ‘a nonstarter for many of us across the Democratic caucus.’
‘As we continue debt ceiling negotiations, we cannot consider the Republicans’ short-sighted proposal to increase work requirements for aid programs,’ Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., wrote on Twitter.
Biden also said he planned to attend the G-7 in Japan on Wednesday – a trip he previously said he could attend virtually if debt limit talks required him to remain in Washington.
‘You would think if he knows he’s leaving the country, then finish these talks before he leaves, he can do that. I would encourage him strongly to do that,’ Scalise told reporters Tuesday.
McCarthy said the president ‘hasn’t taken it serious’ but stopped short of criticizing him for leaving the country amid negotiations.
The federal government reached its $31.4 trillion borrowing limit in January, prompting the Treasury to take ‘extraordinary measures’ to move money around and buy more time for Congress to work out a deal.
The Treasury now says the nation could run out of funds to pay its bills by June 1, though the exact date is unknown.
Biden has long insisted Congress must present him with a ‘clean’ debt ceiling bill and can talk about spending cuts after the limit has been raised. McCarthy has long insisted he won’t do that – using the debt ceiling as leverage to demand cuts to the federal budget.
The president, meanwhile, spent the weekend at his Rehoboth home and is spending Monday attending the graduation of his granddaughter Maisy from the University of Pennsylvania.
