Biden to meet with Democratic leaders as debt showdown looms
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is hosting the Democratic congressional leaders Tuesday at the White House as they face a new era of divided government in Washington, staring down a debt ceiling crisis, the Russian war in Ukraine and their own party priorities running up against a new House Republican majority eager for confrontation.
Ahead of the afternoon meeting, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the House Republicans are risking a potentially devastating debt default that would cascade across the economy hitting American households.
“We're now witnessing the House GOP recklessly flirt with default,” Schumer said.
Schumer said Democrats stand united in working to raise the limit and stop Republicans from imposing draconian budget cuts to federal programs. “If the MAGA GOP stops paying our nation’s bills, Americans pay the price,” he said, referring to those Republicans allied with the Trump-era Make American Great Again movement.
The coming showdown has a familiar precedent — a little more than a decade ago, a new generation of “tea party” House Republicans swept to power, eager to confront the Obama administration to slash federal spending and curb the nation's ballooning debt load. As vice president at the time, Biden was central to those negotiations, but the House Republicans and the White House could never strike a deal, causing a fiscal crisis. This go around, Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress are in no mood to broker deals with a new era of hardline Republicans led by the Freedom Caucus.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is eager to push Biden to the negotiating table, hoping to make good on the promises the GOP leader made to holdouts during his campaign to become House speaker to pare federal spending back to fiscal 2022 levels, which...
