This is what “productive” looks like in Washington as the default deadline approaches

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said this week that he didn’t believe Republicans and Democrats were anywhere near an agreement on raising the debt ceiling. President Biden said little in public. As the risk of default loomed, Republicans banded together and auctioned off a tube of used cherry lip balm, which sold for six figures.

Welcome to the last week of “productive” negotiations in Washington, a city with an entire glossary – cliffs and ceilings and X-dates – of shorthand for its periodic dance with ticking financial time bombs.

“Nothing forces Washington like a deadline,” said Eric Schultz, a former White House deputy press secretary under President Barack Obama.

In recent days, talks have started and stopped and started again as Mr Biden, Mr McCarthy and their teams of negotiators worked to discuss a plan. So far, there are few details: “We both agree that we want to come to an agreement,” McCarthy told reporters Monday after leaving his White House meeting with the president.

Both men appear keen to prevent their relationship from sliding into scorched-earth territory, though they remain far apart on the details of striking a deal before June 1, when the Treasury has indicated that the government may has no money left to pay her bills.

That’s in a week – practically an eternity by the standards of the Washington saga.

And lest anyone think that a failure to break through was a sign of intransigence or dawdling or typical government dysfunction, both sides insisted that everyone involved agree that they wanted to come to an agreement. In a divided Washington, this passes for progress.

Mr McCarthy said the meeting with the president had been ‘productive’. Not only that, it was “better than all the other times we had discussions.”

Mr Biden also used the word “productive” in a short statement after the meeting. Nothing had changed by the following afternoon, when White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre would reiterate: “The meeting the president had with the speaker yesterday was indeed productive,” she affirmed.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader who has shown little willingness to get involved in the productivity drive, weighed in from his home state of Kentucky: “Everyone needs to relax,” he told reporters.

“The last 10 times we raised the debt ceiling, there were things attached to it,” he said, referring to concessions or compromises that are usually – but not always – agreed upon. “This is not that unusual. It’s almost completely required if you have a divided government.

According to the White House, this was not a very productive thing to say.

“What is unusual is that our economy and the US economy are being held hostage and connected to the budget process in this way,” Ms Jean-Pierre noted from the podium in the briefing room.

Perhaps these conversations are actually productive, compared to past president-speaker relationships. (President Donald J. Trump once called speaker Nancy Pelosi a “third grade” politician at a rally at the White House in 2019. It ended soon after.)

But are they normal?

Sort of, according to William Howell, a professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.

“It’s normal in the sense that it’s familiar, but it’s not normal in the sense that it’s particularly healthy or consistent with how other countries meet their debts,” he said.

Outside of Washington, Americans have indicated they want both Republicans and Democrats to move forward in other ways. On Tuesday, CNN published a poll that said, while a majority of Americans supported raising the debt limit, only 31 percent thought Mr Biden had the right priorities, and 29 percent thought the Republicans did.

Forget it. Debt ceiling productivity continued through the day on Tuesday, even as members of the restive right wing of the Republican Party, who will have to appease Mr. McCarthy to close a deal, let it be known that they were in no particular rush.

When a reporter for Semafor Representative Matt Gaetz, Florida Republican, asked about the talks, he replied that he and his conservative colleagues “don’t feel we need to negotiate with our hostage.”

It was unclear whether Mr. Gaetz was referring to the president or the federal government.

On Tuesday, Politico reported that that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia offered $100,000 to buy a tube of Mr. McCarthy’s used lip balm at a Republican fundraising auction.

The high-dollar purchase drew public outcry from Democratic lawmakers who accused them of frivolous behavior as the country moved toward default.

“Spending a hundred thousand dollars on chapstick while working overtime to undermine the programs that working families rely on. GOP priorities in a nutshell,” Representative Nydia Velazquez of New York said on Twitter.

Allies of Mr Biden say they believe real, tangible progress could happen when one of two things happens: the financial markets begin to put pressure on Republicans, as they did in 2011, or the holiday weekend beckons.

“Nothing motivates Congress like the smell of airplane fumes as we approach the weekends,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior Obama adviser who was at the White House during painful debt ceiling negotiations in 2011 and 2013.

“So we’ll see what happens in a few days.”

Aishvarya Kavi reporting contributed.