Biden, McCarthy, once breakfast mates, wrangle over US debt

WASHINGTON (AP) — Not so long ago, Joe Biden and Republican leader Kevin McCarthy used to talk things over at breakfast in Biden's vice presidential home at the Naval Observatory.

Biden was intent in those days on “keeping up relations with the opposition party,” as he writes in his memoir, and the new House majority leader often arrived with fellow GOP lawmakers in tow.

But now, with a potential national debt crisis l ooming, those morning meetings in 2015 seem a political lifetime ago as Democratic President Biden and McCarthy, the new House speaker, prepare for their first official meeting Wednesday at the White House.

“You know, when I met with him as the vice president, he was always eager to sit down and talk,” McCarthy recalled to The Associated Press ahead of the meeting. “He was always a person who would like to try to find solutions, work together.”

Biden has signaled no such open-ended hospitality this time as newly emboldened House Republicans court a risky debt ceiling showdown.

At a fundraiser Tuesday in New York, Biden called McCarthy a “decent man” who was being pulled by demands from restive Republicans.

“He made commitments that are just absolutely off the wall" in order to win the speaker's gavel, Biden said.

Two affable leaders known for their willingness to strike deals, Biden and McCarthy find themselves charging headlong into uncomfortable political terrain in hardball negotiations over the nation's debt limit.

A generation apart — McCarthy, 58, has been in Congress just a third of the time that Biden, 80, has held elected office — the two men are deeply familiar with the ways of Washington and positions of power.

Both have built political brands on their ability to meet with all comers, forging deals where none seemed likely. They've shown...