US Vice President Joe Biden and top lawmakers on Thursday faced an impasse on taxes and healthcare as they worked on a deal to tame the US’ debt and increase its borrowing limit.
Republican and Democratic negotiators briefly discussed health costs, a major driver of the national debt, in a fourth round of talks that lasted a little more than an hour. The normally voluble Biden left the meeting without comment.
“We’re not doing a lot of talking for obvious reasons,” said Republican Senator Jon Kyl, a member of the group.
The group said it could agree on more than US$1 trillion in deficit savings over 10 years, but aides said a fundamental stumbling block remains: Democrats will not consider cuts to health benefits until Republicans consider tax increases.
With next year’s election season already under way, political pressures could push a deal out of reach as both sides turn their disagreements into campaign slogans.
The congressional calendar poses another hurdle as the House of Representatives and the Senate will be in session at the same time for only four of the coming 10 weeks. Kyl said the group could hold a telephone conference next week and staffers could look at specific ideas in the meantime.
The group is trying to hammer out a deal that would give lawmakers political cover to raise the US$14.3 trillion debt ceiling — a limit on the federal government’s borrowing set by Congress — before an Aug. 2 deadline.
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who participated in the talks, has warned the US could face a catastrophic default that would roil global markets if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2.
In a letter, 17 Republican senators said that Treasury could avoid a default if it prioritized debt service over other spending after Aug. 2.
“Even if the debt ceiling remains where it is, there will be more than enough money in the Treasury to make the government’s debt payments,” the letter said.
US President Barack Obama’s former budget director, Peter Orszag, warned that a crisis of confidence in the bond markets will be needed to spur Congress into action.
Finding common ground could be difficult.
Democrats say the Republican plan to save trillions of dollars in coming decades by scaling back the Medicare and Medicaid health coverage programs for the elderly and the poor is unacceptable and see a chance to score gains in the presidential and congressional elections by campaigning against it.
“Public sentiment is everything, and the public sentiment is to preserve Medicare,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said at a news conference.
Public unease with the Republican plan will give Democrats a chance to win back the House, said Representative Steve Israel, the lawmaker in charge of that effort.
Republicans won control of the House last fall on a promise to slash government spending, but polls show voters oppose their plan to revamp the two popular programs, which account for one-quarter of government spending and are expected to eat up a growing portion of the budget in coming decades.
Republicans sought to shift the conversation to their plans to create jobs by cutting taxes and reducing regulations.
They said Democrats were more concerned with winning next year’s election than solving the country’s long-term fiscal woes.
“The Democrats’ plan is to do nothing,” House Speaker John Boehner said. “Doing nothing means that the Medicare plan will go bankrupt and seniors’ benefits will be cut.”
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion