House Majority Whip Tom Emmer said Sunday that President Joe Biden “doesn’t have to negotiate” over the debt ceiling, saying that “Republicans in the House, led by Kevin McCarthy, have passed the solution.”
House Republicans last week narrowly passed their bill to raise the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt limit by an additional $1.5 trillion. But the measure faces nearly impossible odds of passing in the Democratic-led Senate. Emmer disagreed with that contention in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”
“To say that it’s dead on arrival in the Senate, when you’ve got even Joe Manchin suggesting support for this type of approach, I think that’s not exactly accurate,” the Minnesota Republican said. “If you don’t like something in it, if you have ideas of your own, our speaker is more than willing, I’m sure, to listen to those.”
The House GOP measure was aimed at boosting Republicans’ efforts to negotiate with Democrats as the country approaches its default deadline as soon as this summer. But the White House has said it will not negotiate a debt ceiling increase and will accept only a clean proposal to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.
Following passage of the GOP bill, Biden told reporters Wednesday that he would be “happy to meet with McCarthy, but not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended. That’s not negotiable.”
Separately on Sunday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Biden needs to come to the table to negotiate with Republicans on spending and the debt limit.
“The White House needs to ultimately get into this negotiation. The president has been in hiding for two months,” the Louisiana Republican said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“That’s not acceptable to Americans. They expect the president to sit in a room with Speaker McCarthy and start…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply