Following a three-day G-7 summit in Japan, President Joe Biden met with the press to address the debt ceiling issue and put pressure on Republicans to agree to bipartisan terms to avoid default.
Speaking of the meetings, he’s held with congressional leaders and Speaker McCarthy: “We agreed the only way to go forward was a bipartisan bill. I’ve done my part. … Now it’s time for the other side to move from its extreme positions because much of what they’ve proposed is simply, quite frankly, unacceptable.”
Biden indicated that the major sticking point to getting a deal done was with Republicans taking positions that would create a tax break for the wealthy while hurting working-class Americans. “I’m not going to agree to a deal that protects wealthy tax cheats and crypto traders while putting food assistance at risk for nearly 1 million Americans.”
Biden seems to be referring to the proposed GOP position in which they will move to default unless some actions are taken into consideration, including hiking the debt limit by $1.5 trillion dollars but also agreeing to a reduction in federal spending, which would come to about $4.5 trillion. The last point seems to be the stalling point between Dems and GOP.
Pointing to Biden’s assertion that the GOP’s proposal would hurt the working class, the “Limit, Save, and Grow” act would impose stricter work requirements for people to receive SNAP benefits, take back the funding announced by the Biden administration to hire thousands of IRS agents; recoup pandemic relief funds; push forward the GOP’s energy bill which would increase the production of American energy via smoothing the permitting process for oil and gas producers (as well as pushing for incentives to increase production and sales) while decreasing US reliance on foreign oil; and many more measures.
Regardless of the hardlines both sides have set to avoid the blowback of a default; President Biden said that he felt confident that a deal would be meted out before the June 1st deadline.
