Biden says McCarthy is being held hostage by “extreme” members in a debt standoff

President Joe Biden said Tuesday night that he believes House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is still being held hostage by “extreme” members of his party, who is partly responsible for the ongoing debt ceiling deadlock.

Speaking from the Roosevelt Room after his meeting with the four top congressional leaders, the president said that “default is not an option,” telling reporters he had considered using the 14th Amendment to lift the debt ceiling.

Biden also agreed to consider COVID funding as an area in the budget where he would accept cuts — one of the proposals McCarthy put forward after his meeting at the White House Tuesday afternoon.

“I trust Kevin will try to do what he says,” Biden said when asked if he trusted McCarthy. “I don’t know how much leeway Kevin McCarthy thinks he has, when in fact – and I’m not a smartass when I say this – it took 15 votes to win the speakership.”

“And apparently he had to make serious concessions to get it from the most extreme elements of his party,” Biden continued. ‘I just do not know.’

While McCarthy left the meeting saying no “new movement” came out of the discussion despite the US taking less than three weeks to default on $3.1 trillion in debt.

Biden went on to say that he felt the meeting had been a “productive meeting.”

The White House and McCarthy’s staff, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, would continue the conversation starting Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.

And then Biden and the four congressional leaders would meet again on Friday, they agreed.

The White House had previously demanded a “clean” debt ceiling bill separate from any talk of austerity.

The speaker said he pressured Biden “several times” whether he would agree to any cuts or whether there were areas for agreement, but Biden had no specific proposals.

The speaker’s bill passed the House late last month raises the debt limit by $1.5 trillion in exchange for $4.5 trillion in spending cuts over time.

“I was very clear with the president, we now have only two weeks to go. If Chuck Schumer could pass on something — we’d go straight to the conference — but I don’t think Chuck Schumer could pass on anything, they haven’t covered it.”

The Senate has not taken it up because it will not pass.

“I don’t want to play political games with this, I think it’s too important,” McCarthy added.

He confirmed that the use of the 14th Amendment was not discussed during the discussions.

McConnell said, “The United States will not default, it never has, and it never will. However, elections have consequences and we now have a divided government.”

So there has to be an agreement. And the sooner the president and the speaker can agree, the sooner we can solve the problem.”

Schumer said the leaders still have “legitimate disagreements” but hopes there is “agreement in some places.”

Jeffries and Schumer said McCarthy refused to take default “off the table,” which they called “reckless.”

“Instead of giving us a plan to kill default, he gave us a plan to hold default hostage, and that’s a shame,” Schumer said.

Before the meeting, Biden joked that the group would “solve all the world’s problems.”

“I’m sure my colleagues and I will say things to you after this is all over… We’re not going to answer questions now. We are going to work, we are going to solve all the world’s problems,” the president said.

Photos show McCarthy and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Oval Office, sitting on benches facing their Democratic counterparts — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, while Biden sits in a chair at the head of the discussion.

Before leaving the Capitol, McCarthy would oppose extending the debt limit to the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 to give him and the president more time to conduct budget negotiations.

“Now just do this for each other,” the speaker told reporters ahead of his highly anticipated meeting. “He needs to stop ignoring problems. And why do you keep kicking the can on the road? Let’s fix it now.’

The speaker said a debt deal should be worked out next week in order to vote in early June.

The meeting began after 4 p.m. — when markets close — and marks the first time in more than three months that Biden and McCarthy have discussed the debt ceiling.

“I hope it’s different from the last 97 days,” McCarthy said. “On February 1, I went to the president and sat down with him and said we need to work on the debt ceiling so we don’t get to this point. Unfortunately it took him 97 days to finally come back.’

The speaker said he did not have high hopes for the meeting. “I had a much higher expectation 97 days ago…then he told me one thing and did another.”

Both sides are as always entrenched in their opposing demands over the country’s borrowing limit – even though the finance ministry says it could be as little as three weeks before the country runs out of money to pay its bills.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at Tuesday’s daily press briefing that the president’s plan is not to support a short-term debt ceiling extension, further emphasizing the importance of the midday meeting of the ” Big Four’.

“An extension in the short term is not our plan either. That’s not our plan,” she said, adding that it’s Congress that must act to avoid a default.

“This is a man-made crisis leading the speaker. Can get this done.’ “We want to make sure we move the threat of default,” she added. “This is not negotiable.”

The deadline to work out a budget for fiscal year 2024 isn’t until September 30, but McCarthy insists he will raise the debt limit as leverage to guarantee that budget cuts are included.

When the federal government can’t borrow more money and the country’s bills pile up rent than tax revenue, the U.S. could plunge into a catastrophic default, potentially triggering a recession and rising unemployment. The Ministry of Finance has said this could happen as early as June 1.