Tag: Ceiling

Biden and McCarthy hold ‘first good’ meeting on debt ceiling, but ‘no agreements, no promises’

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In a statement, the White House called the meeting a “frank and straightforward dialogue” that represented the first of many conversations.
“President Biden made clear that, as every other leader in both parties in Congress has affirmed, it is their shared duty not to allow an unprecedented and economically catastrophic default,” the White House said. “It is not negotiable or conditional.”
The White House has insisted that it will not negotiate over the debt ceiling, warning that an extended stalemate could spark a financial crisis and push the U.S. to the brink of default.
But Republicans view the debt ceiling as an opportunity to extract concessions from an administration dealing with a divided Congress for the first time in Biden’s presidency. While those stances did not appear to change during their closed-door meeting, McCarthy expressed newfound optimism that the two would eventually be able to clinch a deal.
“I would like to see if we can come to an agreement long before the deadline,” he said. “We have different perspectives. But we both laid out some of our vision of where we want to get to, and I believe after laying both out, I can see where we can find common ground.”
McCarthy declined to detail what specific proposals he discussed with Biden, outside of saying he believes the pair can eventually strike a potential two-year funding deal.
But he reiterated the GOP is determined to rein in government spending as part of an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. It remains unclear what programs McCarthy proposes targeting for funding reductions, and the White House has shown little willingness to enter formal negotiations until he does so.
Biden officials in the run-up to the meeting privately discussed the potential for a compromise that heads off a debt ceiling crisis while separately granting McCarthy small concessions that would allow him to save face with his party — such as creating a commission to study and propose future spending reforms.

But the White House is unwilling to touch entitlement spending or gut programs central to Biden’s agenda. And while McCarthy has tamped down early talk of cuts to Medicare and Social Security, he acknowledged that the two sides remain far apart and appeared to dismiss the idea of a commission.
“I don’t need a commission to tell me where there’s waste, fraud and abuse,” McCarthy said. “We don’t need a commission to tell us to do our job that the American public elected us to do.”
That means that any agreement the White House might consider supporting at this early stage is unlikely to appeal to the GOP.
“Every indication is that absent radical budget cuts and slashing some of the programs that Biden championed, the right wing of the House Republican caucus is not going to go along,” said one Biden economic adviser. “McCarthy has not yet demonstrated that he can get the maximalists in his party to agree to anything other than the maximal position.”
Key to the discussions, the White House believes, is establishing some sort of baseline about what type of bill McCarthy could actually get through the House. The GOP has yet to consolidate behind a set of demands, and the White House is reluctant to lend McCarthy any pre-emptive help as he tries to wrangle his fractious caucus.
Biden officials have gleefully seized on signs of discord among House Republicans, highlighting GOP lawmakers’ own frustration with the party’s lack of a concrete plan.
“We can’t negotiate with ourselves,” said Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), a member of GOP leadership, even as other Republicans have pressed for more clarity on the conference’s strategy. “The president has to negotiate with us.”
The White House also viewed this initial meeting as the first of many over the next several months; an opportunity for both sides to size each other up and establish a starting point for talks that could drag well into the spring and summer.
Though Biden and McCarthy talked occasionally during the Obama era, the two men are not close. The early sitdown, some aides suggested, is part of an effort by Biden to build a relationship with a House speaker he’ll need to work with on an array of priorities over the next two years.
“What you’re not going to see is either party move their position,” the Biden adviser said. “This is the meeting where folks scope things out and get a sense of where everybody is.”
Senior White House officials sought to reinforce their position ahead of time, writing in a memo Tuesday that Biden would press McCarthy to commit to avoiding a debt default and to releasing a budget showing where the GOP wants to rein in funding.
“Any serious conversation about economic and fiscal policy needs to start with a clear understanding of the participants’ goals and proposals,” top economic adviser Brian Deese and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young wrote.
The White House plans to release its budget proposal on March 9, offering what officials hope will provide a clear contrast with Republicans’ demands and sharpen the public debate over lifting the debt ceiling.
The government hit its borrowing limit in January, and estimates it may only be able to pay its bills into June without an increase. The U.S. has never intentionally defaulted, and Congress in recent years routinely voted to increase its borrowing limit under both the Trump and Biden administrations. Pointing to that track record, Democrats have insisted on passing a clean increase yet again, arguing the need to avoid economic catastrophe is too great to haggle over the debt ceiling.
The last time the U.S. came close to default, in 2011, the standoff rattled global financial markets and prompted a downgrade of the country’s credit rating. Should the government breach the debt ceiling this time, economists predict it would trigger an immediate recession and tank the stock market.
Still, House Republicans have relished a fight over the debt ceiling, fueled by a conservative faction that blocked McCarthy’s path to the speakership until he made a series of commitments that included using the debt ceiling to force spending cuts.
That stance has unnerved Democrats, who question McCarthy’s ability to negotiate on behalf of a GOP majority that includes lawmakers who have already indicated they won’t agree to raise the debt limit no matter what deal the two sides strike.
“I have a pretty strong suspicion that once the American people see what the Republican MAGA fringe is up to here, and what their hostage-taking demands are, there will be a sudden collapse [in support],” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who chairs the chamber’s budget committee.
Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 1, 2023
The House Blue Dog Coalition wants to avoid the “partisan standoffs” of prior debt ceiling fights — and says it’s ready to help.

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“It is our hope that these conversations result in good faith negotiations that avoid the partisan standoffs of the past,” the group said.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 31, 2023
Schumer plots debt ceiling course against McCarthy: ‘We’ll win’

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“Unfortunately, [McCarthy] let a group of very extreme people, he gave them the tools” to wield power, Schumer said in an interview. “The plan is to get our Republican colleagues in the House to understand they’re flirting with disaster and hurting the American people. And to let the American people understand that as well. And I think we’ll win.”
It’s something of a new, dual-track role for the New Yorker. For the last two years, Schumer and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed bipartisan Senate groups to work and usually avoided a top-down approach that could have disrupted aisle-crossing negotiations. Before that, Schumer spent four years as one of Trump’s chief antagonists, occasionally negotiating with the former president but mostly focusing on stopping him.
Today, Schumer is somewhere in between, haranguing the House GOP while keeping the door open for the bipartisan work his deal-seeking senators crave. And he’s preparing for a long face-off with McCarthy as Washington charts this year’s mid-year debt ceiling deadline like an approaching meteor.
Asked to respond to Schumer, McCarthy criticized the Democrat’s December drive to pass a year-end spending bill shaped in part by two retiring senators.
“When was the last time he did a budget? So, he wants somebody to lift the debt ceiling, but he won’t tell the American people where he’ll spend money?” McCarthy said of Schumer in a brief interview. (During the last Congress, Schumer’s Senate did pass budget bills to set up filibuster-proof party-line legislation on covid relief, taxes, climate and health care.)
At the moment, there’s little cooking in the Senate on the debt ceiling or otherwise, and Schumer is filling the vacuum with a fusillade of attacks on the GOP. Schumer greeted McCarthy’s chaotic speaker election with a snarky congratulations that the Californian’s “dream job could turn into a nightmare for the American people.”
Notably, however, he has since focused mostly on McCarthy’s more conservative members instead of the new speaker personally. He also hasn’t explicitly ruled out negotiations.
And those conservative members are front and center in the new GOP majority after McCarthy’s stumble-filled but ultimately successful bid for the speakership. One concession he made along the way: House Republicans would refuse to support raising the debt ceiling without a “budget agreement or commensurate fiscal reforms,” according to a slide shown during a closed-door conference meeting earlier this month.

Schumer and McCarthy have not yet held a one-on-one meeting. Aides are hopeful there will be one soon, but it is not yet scheduled.
“There’s a fine line between saying, ‘We disagree, and we have our issues,’ as opposed to saying, ‘They’re no good, they’re scum of the earth,’” said Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), who added that he hopes both leaders treat their rhetoric carefully.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is staying away from the fray, saying he’ll leave things to McCarthy and Biden. And Schumer has declined to address the possibility of bringing a so-called clean debt ceiling increase to the floor, a move that could fail and shake financial markets.
Just the same, Democrats don’t want to open the door for a negotiation that unfolds in the unpredictable style that 2011’s debt ceiling talks did. They’re wary of what happened when Biden himself cut a deal with McConnell that resulted in both domestic and military spending cuts.
“There will be opportunities to work together, but not in the context of them threatening the global economy,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said of House Republicans.
Schumer, contra McConnell, is not encouraging Biden to get in a room with McCarthy. Instead, he said that if McCarthy wants to cut spending as a condition for raising the debt ceiling, Democrats need to see their plan to do so first — echoing the combative tone that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has long taken toward McCarthy.
“When you hear from Biden, they agree with us. [Republicans] have to show us their proposal. They have to show us their plan. Plain and simple. Hakeem Jeffries talked about it today. I believe the president will,” Schumer said. “Democrats are united: Show us the plan. That’s the first step.”
Well, Democrats are mostly united, at least. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) called it “unreasonable” to not negotiate and said he’s not going to tell the House what to do.
“Kevin McCarthy and I know each other. We’re trying to build relationships, because we have responsibility,” said Manchin, who met privately with McCarthy last week.
But Manchin has always done his own thing — and at times of crisis, the Senate Democratic caucus is often nearly lockstep behind Schumer.
“It’s pretty predictable. He wants to turn the heat up on Speaker McCarthy. And I would say it’s not particularly productive, but maybe it’s good political theater,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who has sparred with Schumer for two decades. “I was visiting with some of the Texas congressional delegation at lunch [last week]. And they’ve sort of tuned it out.”
Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), chair of the House Budget Committee, said Republicans want to get specific with fiscal changes “like the 2011 spending cap.” Even today, Republicans still praise aspects of the bipartisan 2011 deal, which created a failed deficit-reduction “supercommittee” and then imposed blunt spending cuts that both parties eventually eliminated.
Arrington suggested Republicans would seek a deal with Biden that could include things like a debt commission, a spending freeze or a 10-year spending deal with budget caps. In response to Democrats’ description of the GOP’s position as “extreme,” Arrington responded: “The American people will be the judge of what is extreme.”
But when it comes to the debt ceiling, Schatz said, “there’s not going to be negotiation. They’re gonna have to just realize that this thing is the biggest loser they’ve ever wrapped their arms around.”
That tack may seem to deviate from Schumer’s approach in the last Congress, but as majority leader, the New Yorkers relied on his own unofficial system for legislating. First, he tries to be bipartisan, and if that doesn’t work, he tries to pass things without Republicans.
And if he can’t do either of those, then it’s time to bring the fight to the Senate floor and the cameras.
“I’ve always had a hierarchy,” Schumer said. “We’ll try to work with them when we can, but when they’re as extreme as they are, we have an obligation to stand up.”
Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 30, 2023
McCarthy optimistic about agreement with Biden on debt ceiling

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McCarthy has taken the opportunity to attempt to force government spending cuts; the U.S. needs to both lift the nation’s debt ceiling and “take control of this runaway spending,” McCarthy told host Margaret Brennan on Sunday.
The Biden administration has argued Congress has the responsibility to pass a debt limit increase without conditions attached, noting that Congress did exactly that three times during former President Donald Trump’s tenure.
Asked about White House concerns that some Republicans are seeking cuts to Social Security and Medicare, McCarthy said, “Let’s take those off the table.”
Cuts to defense spending, however, are still in play, McCarthy suggested.
“I want to look at every dollar no matter where it’s being spent,” he said, when asked specifically about defense. “I want to eliminate waste wherever it is.”
McCarthy insisted the U.S. wouldn’t default on its debt — an unprecedented potential consequence of inaction that could wreak widespread damage on the nation’s credit and the global economy.
“But let’s take a pause,” McCarthy said. “We have hundreds of billions of dollars. This [default] won’t come to fruition until some time in June. So the responsible thing to do is sit down like two adults.”
The U.S. already hit its statutory limit on debt earlier this month, but Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has predicted “extraordinary measures” could prevent default until June. Some Republicans have argued they could mitigate the situation by having the federal government prioritize who it pays and when, but it’s not clear if that is feasible, given that so much of the system is automated.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 29, 2023
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January 28, 2023
Veterans of the Obama-era debt ceiling standoff on the current one: We may be doomed

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“There’s the potential for it to be very bad,” said Kamin, who did a stint as a top Biden economic staffer before returning to academia last year. “We’re back here, and there’s a real risk to the economy on the line.”
Kamin isn’t the only one struck by a foreboding sense of déjà vu. From the White House to Wall Street, a growing number of veterans of the 2011 debt ceiling crisis are again watching a story of bluster and brinkmanship play out — and are terrified this will be the time it ends with the country in financial ruin.
“It feels like there’s a desire to get closer and closer to the brink,” said David Vandivier, who was a senior Treasury official during the 2011 negotiations. “At a certain point, you don’t know where the line is.”
The parallels to the Obama-era stalemate are clear, as House Republican leaders vow to place restraints on a Democratic administration, while also trying to manage their troublesome conservative wing.
But unlike in 2011, Republicans are preparing to stare down the White House with no clear consensus on what they want in exchange for keeping the U.S. financial system afloat. The prevailing principle, instead, appears to be extracting a degree of political pain for President Joe Biden. And perhaps most worryingly — Democrats, economists and even some Republicans say — there’s little confidence that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has the influence to successfully steer his conference away from the brink.
“I wish I could look at this, having been through a bunch of these, and say there’s going to be a bunch of drama but this is how it gets resolved,” said Brendan Buck, an aide to then-GOP House Speaker John Boehner during the 2011 debt negotiations. “But I don’t know how this gets resolved. There are just huge obstacles here [that] I don’t think were quite as problematic in 2011.”
Or as Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) put it: “I think these people are nuts, and they’re serious.”
Dan Pfeiffer, a senior Obama aide during the 2011 showdown, said that of his entire time in the administration, he was never more scared than in the final days of that debt ceiling fight, “because it was very possible we were going over the cliff.”

For him, the similarities to now are obvious: a Democratic president unsure if the leader of the opposing party has the “clout” to get his conference on the same page. But the White House, at the time, felt Boehner understood and took seriously the dangers of default.
“Boehner may have been willing to put more of his ass on the line. He did intellectually and substantively understand why default was terrible,” Pfeiffer said. “I’m not sure that McCarthy understands that, that McCarthy cares, that McCarthy would value the full faith and credit of the United States over his own job.”
The U.S. has never intentionally defaulted on its debt, a track record that has made its Treasury securities a safe haven for investors globally and allowed the government to borrow money at low interest rates.
There is universal consensus that a debt ceiling breach would be a historic catastrophe. Interest rates would skyrocket and the stock market would tank. The economy would spiral into a recession, shaking consumer confidence and decimating the nation’s financial credibility on the world stage. The impact could ripple across the globe, prompting debt crunches in lower-income countries with foreign currency reserves held in a suddenly weaker U.S. dollar.
At the Treasury Department, officials would be forced to prioritize what payments it could make to bondholders — a logistical challenge the government has never attempted before, and one sure to invite blowback for funneling money to foreign investors while Social Security and other benefits go unfunded.
“You’re shaking the bedrock of the global financial system to the core,” said Mark Zandi, the longtime chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, who projects that just a few weeks of default would double the unemployment rate and wipe out $12 trillion in household wealth.
The severity of those consequences has so far offered some comfort on Capitol Hill and in company boardrooms, where the belief is that the cost of failure is so high that the parties can’t afford not to reach a deal. Since the 2011 standoff, Congress has raised or suspended the debt ceiling nine times, three of which came under former President Donald Trump.
“America’s not going to default on its debt. There are going to be a lot of stories and gnawing and gnashing of teeth in the media about what’s going to happen,” said McCarthy ally and former Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill).
Though the possibility of default is still several months away, Biden has signaled plans to meet with McCarthy on the issue, though the White House has said he will merely reiterate his current position that the debt ceiling is not subject to negotiation. In both the administration and Republican leadership, officials have begun privately gaming out endgame scenarios.
Democrats believe that cutting discretionary spending will prove deeply unpopular with the public once Republicans pinpoint the programs they’d slash. That, in turn, will force Republicans to moderate their demands. Within the GOP, there’s widespread belief the White House will eventually drop its “no negotiation” stance and seek a bipartisan resolution.
“The administration and the Senate needs to realize Kevin’s serious,” Davis said. “He’s serious about having this discussion [about spending cuts].”
The White House declined to comment for this article, though officials have previously said that while Biden won’t negotiate over the debt ceiling, he’s open to discussing broader fiscal policies.
McCarthy spokesperson Chad Gilmartin said the speaker looked forward to discussing a “responsible debt ceiling increase” with Biden, and added the White House should be open to negotiating “how we can put America on a sounder fiscal path by finally addressing irresponsible government spending.”
But whenever that meeting does happen, few expect Biden and McCarthy to find any common ground. The White House has shrugged off concerns about its spending, buoyed by what it sees as the successful role its trillion-dollar relief Covid-relief plan played in accelerating the economic recovery.
McCarthy, meanwhile, may struggle to find a set of spending cuts that can satisfy his own conference, much less win support across the aisle. Some Republicans have floated a range of proposals targeting programs like Medicare and Social Security, even as McCarthy and Trump have publicly dismissed the idea of touching entitlements.
Though the Republican party is focused on securing sharp funding reductions across government, there’s no agreement so far on how much or where exactly they should come from. Some, like Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), have questioned the need to raise the debt ceiling at all.
“It’s scary because with everything that McCarthy has given away to his right wing, he may have restricted his range of motion in ways that are going to be very dangerous,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).
In the interim, many of the 2011 veterans have spent recent weeks emphasizing the gravity of the situation to anyone who will listen, fearful that every week that goes by without progress ups the odds of a disastrous outcome.
“This time,” said Zandi, “it feels different to me. It feels much more dysfunctional.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 26, 2023
Democratic leaders are skewering Kevin McCarthy over his debt ceiling position. Joe Manchin is meeting with him.

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Most congressional Democrats say there’s nothing to negotiate.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 25, 2023
Biden hosts Democrats at White House as standoff over debt ceiling looms

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The stalemate over the nation’s debt ceiling was a prime example of how the shift in congressional power could shape the rest of Biden’s term, as Republican lawmakers push for spending cuts before agreeing to Democrats’ requests to increase the debt limit.
At the start of the meeting, Biden said: “I have no intention of letting the Republicans wreck our economy, nor does anybody around this table.” He is expected to meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to discuss the standoff, though White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday said she had no updates about timing for when.
Later, Schumer said the White House and Democratic leaders were on the “same page” regarding the debt ceiling. White House officials have continued to stress that Congress must pass a clean limit increase, noting that lawmakers raised the debt ceiling three times under former President Donald Trump without demanding spending cuts.
“One of the things we want to do on the debt ceiling is say to Republicans, show us your plan,” Schumer said. “Do they want to cut Social Security? Do they want to cut Medicare? Do they want to cut veterans benefits? Do they want to cut police? Do they want to cut food for needy kids? What’s your plan? We don’t know if they can even put one together.”
Jeffries described the meeting as “wonderful,” adding that the group discussed jobs, infrastructure and the administration’s accomplishments. Schumer also said the group agreed to lean into implementation of the bills they’ve passed.
“One of the things we’re going to work together on, the president, the House, the Senate, is making sure that implementation of all the good things that we did in the last two years gets to the people quickly, in a real way, and gets to the right people — the working families of America,” Schumer said.
Schumer and Jeffries were joined by House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.)
The Democratic leaders retreated back into the White House without taking questions on the president’s handling of classified documents, a storyline that has dominated the new year for Biden.

The White House on Tuesday evening also hosted new members of Congress for a reception in the East Room.
Olivia Olander contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 25, 2023
Manchin: It’s a mistake to ‘not negotiate’ with Republicans on debt ceiling

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No date has been set for the Biden-McCarthy meeting.
“I’m optimistic they will sit down, as this White House always has, and that’s why we were able to accomplish so much in a bipartisan way last Congress. It takes constructive conversation,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) said on “Fox News Sunday.” “There’s things that are reasonable on the table, and there are things that are unreasonable. Gutting Social Security and Medicare is on the unreasonable.”
On the Republican side, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Biden not negotiating with Republicans is “not how to unify our country.”
“We are very divided right now. We have $31 trillion of debt. The responsible thing to do would be to get to the table with Republicans and negotiate a way,” Mace said.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) said on “Fox News Sunday” it’s a problem that the Biden administration won’t negotiate with Republicans. It’s “not leadership,” he said.
House Republicans want a deal that includes spending cuts before raising the debt ceiling, but Biden officials have insisted that Congress pass a clean debt ceiling increase. Democrats have noted that Congress passed three increases on the debt ceiling under former President Donald Trump without demanding spending cuts.
Manchin said the cuts proposed by Republicans are “not going to happen.”
“Take that off the board right now and look at ways that we have wasteful spending that we can be held accountable and responsible,” the West Virginia Democrat said.

Trump issued a warning to Republican lawmakers on Friday, saying that Republicans shouldn’t vote to cut “a single penny” from Medicare or Social Security.
“It’s ironic,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) said on MSNBC, “that Kevin McCarthy and his fellow Republicans in the House are now suddenly discovering that deficit and debt is this important issue, because they’re the same folks who voted to raise the debt ceiling, and never said a word when Donald Trump was adding more to our national debt than any president in our American history.”
On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the U.S. had reached its debt limit and would need to use extraordinary measures to avoid a default. Yellen has projected that Congress has until at least June to pass a debt ceiling increase.
If the federal government exhausts its use of extraordinary measures for the first time, it could impact Americans who depend on government benefits and “would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability,” Yellen has said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 22, 2023
Biden to meet with McCarthy over avoiding debt ceiling ‘calamity’

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But Biden’s remarks set off a back-and-forth later in the day that underscored the deep divide between the White House and House Republicans over how to approach the debt ceiling discussions.
McCarthy tweeted shortly afterward that he would accept a request to meet “and discuss a responsible debt ceiling increase to address irresponsible government spending.”
The White House responded in a statement issued later on Friday, where Jean-Pierre reiterated that “raising the debt ceiling is not a negotiation; it is an obligation of this country and its leaders to avoid economic chaos.”
“We are going to have a clear debate on two different visions for the country — one that cuts Social Security, and one that protects it — and the President is happy to discuss that with the Speaker,” Jean-Pierre said.
The development comes a day after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the U.S. had reached its debt limit and would need to use special measures to avoid a default. Yellen has projected that Congress has until at least June to pass a debt ceiling increase.
Biden officials have insisted that Congress pass a clean debt ceiling increasing, arguing that it is one of the government’s basic duties and shouldn’t come with any conditions attached.
The U.S. has never defaulted on its debt. Failing to do so for the first time ever, Democrats and a wide swathe of economists have cautioned, would destroy the nation’s financial credibility, tank the stock market and throw the global economy into chaos.
But Republicans are signaling that they plan to force a showdown over the debt ceiling, in a bid to extract a host of deep spending cuts from the administration. McCarthy earlier this week urged Biden and Democratic congressional leaders to begin discussions on a potential deal.

On Friday, Biden also said that he would address what he called a “fundamental disagreement” over how to control spending as part of his State of the Union address. The White House has hammered Republicans repeatedly over their suggestions that the government cut funding for Medicare and Social Security as part of a debt ceiling deal.
“Their way to deal with cutting that debt is to cut social security, cut Medicaid,” Biden said. “These are the kind of debates that we’re going to have.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 21, 2023