US President Joe Biden and US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy postponed their meeting on the debt ceiling set for yesterday as their aides continued negotiations toward avoiding a catastrophic US default.
The delay signals that staff-level talks on energy permitting reform and government spending have yielded progress, people familiar with the talks said.
McCarthy said Biden is planning to meet with him and other congressional leaders next week, although neither side specified a date.
Photo: REUTERS
McCarthy told reporters at the US Capitol in Washington that the leaders agreed it would be “more productive” for staff to proceed with their discussions.
‘MOVING ALONG’
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he believed talks “are moving along.”
White House Director of Legislative Affairs Louisa Terrell met behind closed doors with McCarthy chief of staff Dan Meyer and other aides for more than two hours on Thursday afternoon.
Yet even as both sides touted progress in private talks, McCarthy — who must pacify restive conservatives who demand deep budget cuts — sharply criticized Democrats.
PANNING BIDEN
“President Biden and Senator Schumer are stuck on ‘no.’ They have no plan, no proposed savings and no clue,” McCarthy told reporters as news of the meeting delay broke. “Apparently, President Biden doesn’t want to deal. He wants to default.”
McCarthy said one of the leaders had to attend a funeral yesterday and that, “combined with the lack of progress and seriousness on the part of the White House,” led to the postponement.
However, he added that it did not mean the talks had fallen apart.
The US Department of the Treasury has warned that the US could default on payments as soon as June 1 if lawmakers are unable to strike an agreement to raise the debt ceiling.
Doing so would reverberate throughout the global economy, economists say.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RIVALRY: ‘We know that these are merely symbolic investigations initiated by China, which is in fact the world’s most profligate disrupter of supply chains,’ a US official said China has started a pair of investigations into US trade practices, retaliating against similar probes by US President Donald Trump’s administration as the superpowers stake out positions before an expected presidential summit in May. The move, announced by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on Friday, is a direct mirror of steps Trump took to revive his tariff agenda after the US Supreme Court last month struck down some of his duties. “China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to these actions,” a ministry spokesperson said in a statement, referring to the so-called Section 301 investigations initiated on March 11.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
RSS