Biden meets with congressional leaders to resume debt ceiling talks

WASHINGTON (TND) — Debt ceiling talks hit a critical crossroads today as President Joe Biden meets with congressional leaders.

Former White House Economic Adviser Steve Moore joined The National Desk’s Jan Jeffcoat on Tuesday to discuss the issue.

“Negotiations have started. The President's position was that he was not going to negotiate on the debt ceiling but now that the Republicans have gotten a debt ceiling bill through the House, the Democrats can't seem to get anything through the Senate,” he said. “This is going to have to be resolved through negotiations between speaker Kevin McCarthy and the president. So you know, they're in the first couple of rounds of this boxing match so this will be an important meeting today.”

On Monday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said “no progress” has been made on debt ceiling talks as the debt ceiling deadline looms near.

Biden told reporters on Sunday that he’s optimistic about coming to an agreement, saying, “I think we’ll be able to do it.”

“I don't believe that the June 1st deadline the president and the treasury have been talking about is really a hard deadline. I think the chance of any kind of defect default on the debt is pretty close to zero, although everybody's watching this very closely,” Moore said. “You're gonna have to have the president give on some of his positions. Republicans want to not let funding for those 87,000 new IRS agents they want to claw back some of the unspent COVID money and so there's a lot to be negotiated here.”