Biden, McCarthy near to deal on US debt ceiling as default looms

Reuters

US President Joe Biden and top congressional Republican Kevin McCarthy on Thursday appeared to be nearing a deal to cut spending and raise the government's US$31.4 trillion debt ceiling, with little time to spare to head off the risk of default.

The deal would specify the total amount the government could spend on discretionary programs like housing and education, according to a person familiar with the talks, but not break that down into individual categories. The two sides are just US$70 billion apart on a total figure that would be well over US$1 trillion, according to another source.

The two sides met virtually on Thursday, the White House said.

Republican negotiators have backed off plans to increase military spending while cutting non-defense spending and instead backed a White House push to treat both budget items more equally, a source familiar with the talk told Reuters.

Biden said they still disagreed over where the cuts should fall.

"I don't believe the whole burden should fall back to middle-class and working-class Americans," he told reporters.

House Speaker McCarthy told reporters on Thursday evening that the two sides have not reached a deal. "We knew this would not be easy," he said.

It is unclear precisely how much time Congress has left to act. The Treasury Department was warned that it could be unable to cover all its obligations as soon as June 1, but on Thursday said it would sell US$119 billion worth of debt that will come due on that date, suggesting to some market watchers that it was not an iron-clad deadline.

"They have suggested in the past that they would not announce auctions that they did not believe they had the means to settle," Gennadiy Goldberg, senior rates strategist at TD Securities in New York. "So I do think that's a positive note."

Any agreement will have to pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and the Democratic-controlled Senate. That could be tricky, as some right-wing Republicans and many liberal Democrats said they were upset by the prospect of compromise.

"I don't think everybody's going to be happy at the end of the day. That's not how the system works," McCarthy said.

The House adjourned on Thursday afternoon for a week-long break, and the Senate is not in session. Lawmakers have been told to be ready to come back to vote if a deal is reached.

The deal would only set broad spending outlines, leaving lawmakers to fill in the blanks in the weeks and months to come.

It would specify the total amount of military spending, which has been a key sticking point in the talks, one of the sources said.

Biden has resisted Republican proposals to stiffen work requirements for anti-poverty programs and loosen oil and gas drilling rules, according to Democratic Representative Mark TakaNo.

Representative Kevin Hern, who leads the powerful Republican Study Committee, told Reuters a deal was likely by Friday afternoon.

Democrats on Thursday focused their attacks on what they said would be devastating cuts in federal aid for veterans — ranging from health care and food aid to housing assistance — if Republicans got their way in the negotiations.

"Time's up for all of these games around here," Democratic Representative Don Davis, a US Air Force veteran, said at a press conference.

A US default could upend global financial markets and push the United States into recession.

Credit rating agency DBRS Morningstar put the United States on review for a possible downgrade on Thursday, echoing similar warnings by Fitch, Moody's and Scope Ratings. Another agency, S&P Global, downgraded US debt following a similar debt-ceiling standoff in 2011.