Republicans report progress in debt cut talks as negotiations continue
Republican congressional leaders said on Thursday they were making progress toward a deal with President Biden to raise the debt ceiling while cutting spending, warning that an agreement still being worked out would inevitably disappoint lawmakers from both parties.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol that negotiators had been working “well past midnight” and resumed negotiations later Thursday morning, trying to find a solution to avoid a default on the national debt before the scheduled June 1 deadline. . He said there were still “unresolved issues” and that he had instructed his negotiators to work “24/7” until a deal was struck.
“I don’t think everyone will be happy at the end of the day,” McCarthy said, nodding to growing concern among some far-right Republicans that their party was making too many concessions during the talks. “That’s not how this system works.”
Democrats, too, grew concerned that Mr. Biden would go too far in accepting Republican demands, including spending cuts and stricter work requirements for public benefit programs. They sat together in the Capitol that afternoon to discuss the state of negotiations.
Lawmakers geared up to leave Washington for Memorial Day later Thursday, but talks were expected to continue into the weekend and members of Congress were ready to return and vote if a deal was reached.
Representative Patrick T. McHenry of North Carolina, one of Mr. McCarthy’s top negotiators, said there were still “thorny issues” to resolve, the most important of which was spending ceilings.
“We have legislative work to do, policy work to do,” Mr McHenry said. “The details of all those things are really important for us to get this thing through.”
“We don’t have a deal yet, and so until we have a deal, I don’t think we’ll know exactly what the coalition will look like to get it approved,” said South Dakota Representative Dusty Johnson, a top South Dakota executive. McCarthy ally. “But listen, Kevin McCarthy understands how conservative his conference is. He is going to make a deal that will be embraced by the vast majority of his conference.
As negotiators moved closer to a deal, hard-right Republicans openly voiced concern that Mr. McCarthy would sign a compromise they deemed insufficiently conservative. Several right-wing Republicans have already vowed to oppose any compromise that waives spending cuts that were part of their debt-cut bill, which would cut domestic spending by an average of 18 percent over a decade.
“Republicans shouldn’t make a bad deal,” Texas Representative Chip Roy, an influential conservative, wrote on Twitter shortly after telling a local radio station that he should “have some blunt conversations with my colleagues and the leadership team” because he didn’t like “the direction they’re going”.
South Carolina Representative Ralph Norman said he wondered how he would vote on a compromise until he saw the bill, but added, “What I’ve seen now isn’t good.”
Former President Donald J. Trump, who has said Republicans should force a default if they don’t get what they want in the negotiations, also weighed in. Mr McCarthy told reporters he spoke briefly with Mr Trump about the negotiations – “It just came up for a moment,” said the speaker. “He was talking about, ‘Get a good deal.'”
After playing a tee shot on his golf course outside of Washington, Mr. Trump approached a reporter from The New York Times, iPhone in hand, and showed a phone call with Mr. McCarthy.
“It’s going to be an interesting thing — it’s not going to be that easy,” Trump said, describing his call with the speaker as “a short, quick conversation.”
“They’ve wasted three years of money on bullshit,” he added, saying, “Republicans don’t want to see that, so I understand where they stand.”
Luke Broadwater And Stephanie Lay contributed reporting from Washington, and Alan Blinder from Sterling, Va.