US President Joe Biden and US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy postponed their meeting on the debt ceiling set for yesterday as their aides continued negotiations toward avoiding a catastrophic US default.
The delay signals that staff-level talks on energy permitting reform and government spending have yielded progress, people familiar with the talks said.
McCarthy said Biden is planning to meet with him and other congressional leaders next week, although neither side specified a date.
Photo: REUTERS
McCarthy told reporters at the US Capitol in Washington that the leaders agreed it would be “more productive” for staff to proceed with their discussions.
‘MOVING ALONG’
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he believed talks “are moving along.”
White House Director of Legislative Affairs Louisa Terrell met behind closed doors with McCarthy chief of staff Dan Meyer and other aides for more than two hours on Thursday afternoon.
Yet even as both sides touted progress in private talks, McCarthy — who must pacify restive conservatives who demand deep budget cuts — sharply criticized Democrats.
PANNING BIDEN
“President Biden and Senator Schumer are stuck on ‘no.’ They have no plan, no proposed savings and no clue,” McCarthy told reporters as news of the meeting delay broke. “Apparently, President Biden doesn’t want to deal. He wants to default.”
McCarthy said one of the leaders had to attend a funeral yesterday and that, “combined with the lack of progress and seriousness on the part of the White House,” led to the postponement.
However, he added that it did not mean the talks had fallen apart.
The US Department of the Treasury has warned that the US could default on payments as soon as June 1 if lawmakers are unable to strike an agreement to raise the debt ceiling.
Doing so would reverberate throughout the global economy, economists say.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS