May 15 (UPI) — Though negotiations so far have yielded few breakthroughs in resolving the impasse over the debt ceiling, President Joe Biden said he feels both sides are looking for an agreement.
Biden told reporters Monday that he had no updates about the negotiations as he prepared to travel to Philadelphia after a meeting scheduled for last Friday was postponed.
However, the president struck a positive tone over the weekend regarding the prospect of finding a solution as a June 1 deadline looms.
“I remain optimistic because I’m a congenital optimist,” the president said on Sunday. “But 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.”
Biden has said he wants to raise the debt ceiling without any conditions and negotiate spending cuts separately as part of the national budget plan, while House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., continues to express frustration with the president since the House passed a bill in April that would slash federal programs to raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion over the next year.
The White House has continued to engage with McCarthy’s staff throughout the week, including a two-hour meeting Thursday on Capitol Hill, which was attended by Biden’s top legislative aide Louisa Terrell.
While Friday’s meeting was postponed, the White House said that staff continued to meet over the weekend to march toward an agreement.
“The meetings have been productive over the past few days and leaders wanted to continue before they regrouped,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of the delay during a press briefing on Friday. “Again, you know, as we’ve said we’re not going to certainly negotiate in public.”
Most lawmakers involved in the talks, meanwhile, indicated there was some movement taking place behind the scenes, though Biden on Sunday said it was premature to make any grand statements on progress.
“It never is good to characterize a negotiation in the middle of a negotiation,” he said.
The Congressional Budget Office on Friday said that if there’s no resolution, “there is a significant risk that at some point in the first two weeks of June, the government will no longer be able to pay all of its obligations.”
Should the government default on its debt obligations, government workers and those getting support from Social Security won’t get paid. It would also become increasingly difficult to secure a line of credit and increase the chance of a recession.
It would also undermine faith in the U.S. economy given its importance in global trade as the world’s largest market. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that if Congress didn’t raise the debt ceiling, the United States would face an economic and financial “catastrophe” by summer.