US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaks to the media as he leaves a meeting on the debt ceiling with US President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, DC, on May 22, 2023.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — A significant group of House Republicans raised questions Tuesday about whether the Treasury Department’s June 1 deadline to avoid a potential U.S. debt default was accurate.
“We’d like to see more transparency on how they come to that date,” House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise said Tuesday at a news conference.
Scalise also said he believed that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s latest comments, out Monday, “implied that it’s June 1, or later, giving some openness to the idea that June 1 may not be the so called X-date.”
Yellen released a new letter to congressional leaders Monday that appeared to say the opposite of what Scalise claimed, specifically omitting a line from a previous letter about how extraordinary measures could buy the United States more time to avoid defaulting on its debt.
“We haven’t really been able to see a lot of transparency, but it looks like they’re hedging now and opening up the door to move that date back,” said Scalise.
A Treasury spokesperson declined to comment.
On Capitol Hill, debt ceiling negotiators prepared to narrow their focus to a smaller group of key issues that were ripe for compromise, an encouraging development with just nine days left before the U.S. faced the serious risk of a potentially catastrophic national debt default.
“We’re getting closer,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters late Monday, adding that the “circle” of issues was becoming “smaller, smaller, smaller.”
The issues still on the table Tuesday included reforms to energy permitting, new work requirements for some forms of federal aid and the redistribution of unused Covid-19 emergency funds.
Also on the table are “health savings,” CNBC reported Monday, which could include reforms to how much the government…
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