President Joe Biden’s anticipated meeting originally scheduled for Friday with congressional leaders aimed at discussing a deal to avert a default on the national debt has been postponed, a White House spokesperson said.
Friday’s meeting would have been the second time in less than a week that congressional leaders met with Biden at the White House in an effort to reach a solution to avoid default. Instead, the spokesperson told CNN on Thursday, staff will continue to meet and the leaders will come together again next week.
“I don’t think there’s enough progress for the leaders to get back together,” McCarthy said on Thursday, adding that he expects a meeting on debt limit next week with the four congressional leaders and the White House.
“The White House didn’t cancel the meeting – all of the leaders decided it’s probably in the best of our interest to let the staff meet again before we get back together,” McCarthy said.
A source familiar with the meetings insisted the delay was a “positive development” and that “meetings are progressing.”
White House officials and aides to McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries all thought postponing the meeting was a good idea, according to another source familiar with the negotiations. The general consensus, they said, is that allowing more time for staff-level talks will ensure the leaders’ meeting would be “more productive.”
In a sign of contention, however, McCarthy slammed the “seriousness” of the White House in debt negotiations on Thursday, saying, “it seems like they want a default.”
The ongoing conversations between the two federal branches come at a critical moment.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently warned that the United States could default on its obligations as soon as June 1 if Congress doesn’t find a…
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