Biden hosts a big debt ceiling meeting while insisting there's nothing to talk about

W. James Antle III

May 09, 07:00 AM May 09, 07:01 AM

President Joe Biden is set to meet Tuesday with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and other congressional leaders about the debt ceiling standoff, but if you believe the White House, there is nothing to talk about.

“Look, there shouldn't be negotiations on the debt limit,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday. “This is something that they should get to regular order and get to work on. We should not have House Republicans manufacturing a crisis on something that has been done 78 times since 1960.”

BIDEN INCHES CLOSER TO TALKING TO REPUBLICANS ABOUT THE DEBT CEILING

Jean-Pierre pitched the meeting as more of a Biden lecture. “So we're telling them — or saying to them: Do your job,” she said. “Pay for something that you've already spent on. That's it.” The message was similar last week.

“It is the president's job to also be very clear with Congress, with Republicans in Congress: You got to do your job,” Jean-Pierre said. “It is simple.”

“The question is to Speaker McCarthy, as I've said many times before here, is to — to the MAGA Republicans: What is going on here?” she added. “Why can you not get this done? It is simple. It is simple.”

“Let me be very clear: Congress needs to do its job,” budget director Shalanda Young concurred. “Tomorrow, they could put a bill on the floor to make sure we don't default. This is of people's own making.”

“As you know, the president is going to make clear that default has to come off the table, that he is happy to talk about spending priorities and who you value in this country, what our right tax policy is in this country, why every time we have this debate it has to go to working families in this country first in order to do the right thing for this country,” Young also told reporters.

In this telling, McCarthy and other congressional leaders are going to the White House for some coaching, and Biden is Bill Belichick: Do your job. There is no dialogue, only a monologue.

Young mocked this idea even while suggesting it would be Biden’s approach.

“Imagine if this president said, ‘Here's my budget' on March 9. 'If you don't take it all — lock, stock, and barrel, don't change your word, pass it without changes, I'd be willing to cause a recession and cost millions of people their jobs.’ That would be extreme,” she said.

At the same time, Young was saying Biden and his team did not view the only debt ceiling extension to pass a house of Congress, however narrowly, to be the starting point for the talks even though there is a risk of default sometime in June.

On the one hand, Young said Biden is “eager to have a separate conversation about the budget without threatening our economy.” On the other hand, “this is not some abstract debate.” The Biden budget, it seems, is better.

At Monday’s briefing, there were nearly a dozen instances of Jean-Pierre telling Congress to do its job, though some of those comments were referring to passing gun control rather than raising the debt ceiling without spending cuts.

This could all be posturing. In his 36 years in the Senate, Biden threw sharp partisan elbows in public and negotiated in private. He led the debt ceiling talks with House Republicans as vice president under former President Barack Obama, which did result in some spending cuts.

It is possible that Biden’s off-ramp will be an agreement on spending cuts passed through legislation separate from a debt ceiling extension or suspension. The White House invitation itself was a softening of the no-negotiations stance in response to a letter from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen moving up the day of debt limit reckoning.

“I think that we have to make it clear to the American people that I am prepared to negotiate in detail with their budget,” Biden said in an interview with MSNBC on Friday night. “How much are you going to spend? How much are you going to tax? Where can we cut?”

At the same time, Biden and congressional Republicans are far apart on spending priorities. There is little trust between them that would allow for a quick debt ceiling extension to be followed by budget negotiations.

The White House meeting could also be about establishing blame, as Biden’s team has spent a considerable amount of time arguing that any default, with economic consequences that could prove as dangerous to the president as the GOP, is the fault of House Republicans.

Biden was elected as a legislative deal-maker extraordinaire. But don’t call Tuesday’s bipartisan meeting a negotiation just yet.