The White House is drawing its battle lines.
As spending negotiations get underway, the White House has conveyed to congressional negotiators that President Joe Biden’s most recent legislative accomplishment, the Inflation Reduction Act, is off the table as the two sides begin to eye potential spending cuts, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
The law, which makes historic investments in combating climate change, was targeted as part of House Republicans’ bill to cut spending alongside a debt ceiling increase.
That carve-out is one of several that the president and his aides are outlining in the first stage of spending negotiations in which White House officials are focused on narrowing the scope of negotiations by taking non-starter items off the table and beginning a conversation about where spending could actually be cut, the sources said. The goal of staff-level talks, the sources said, is to more clearly define the contours of spending negotiations by the time Biden reconvenes congressional leaders at the White House on Friday.
That first stage began with Biden’s meeting with congressional leaders on Tuesday – where officials said the IRA was off the table – and continued Wednesday with a two-hour staff-level meeting at the White House, during which both sides began to draw battle lines and convey their starting positions for the multi-round negotiations to follow.
Among the White House’s other non-starter items: rolling back student debt forgiveness, a key campaign promise that remains tied up in litigation that was also targeted in House Republicans’ bill last month, and Medicaid and SNAP benefits
A source familiar with the negotiations said White House officials raised all of those items in Wednesday’s meeting, calling them priorities the White House would not see cut.
Even as Biden continues to…
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