US debt ceiling negotiations enter final stretch

Without having yet reached an agreement, Republicans and Democrats continue their tough negotiations on Saturday to avoid a default on the debt of USA that could happen on June 5, to find a compromise between the red lines drawn by both parties.

“We had a long list of disagreements for a long time. But I didn’t expect us to have a short list.” Republican negotiator Patrick McHenry told reporters on Saturday.

On Friday, US President Joe Biden had spoken out quite a lot “optimistic” about the possibility of agreement.

“Everyone wants to see white smoke appear, but we are not there yet” to that, McHenry noted more subduedly late Friday night.

Discussions have progressed on both sides, but negotiators now disagree on some details of the agreement that constitute impassable red lines for the parties.

“Democrats want to spend more and tax more. Republicans are fighting to change that. It’s as simple as that”, The Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, pointed out on Saturday on his Twitter account, setting the tone for the upcoming discussions.

USA, which entered the long weekend for the Memorial Day holiday, is still stuck around an agreement to raise the ceiling on its debt, essential to avoid default.

The date on which the US Treasury could not meet its financial commitments, originally June 1, was adjusted and reset to June 5, allowing for a few days to gain air.

hours or days

One of the main points of disagreement between both rows is the request of the Republicans to condition certain social benefits, such as food aid at work.

“I don’t think it’s right to borrow money from China to pay healthy people who don’t have dependents to hang out on their sofa. It’s not the American way of doing things… That’s not what we believe in.” lashed out McCarthy, who declares himself an uncompromising defender of fiscal discipline.

White House deputy spokesman Andrew Bates criticized Republicans for endangering “more than eight million jobs” while they try “take bread out of the mouths of hungry Americans.”

Biden, already campaigning for re-election in 2024, markets himself as a fighter for social and fiscal justice and has repeatedly said he opposes massive budget cuts that would hit the most precarious workers and households.

When asked when a deal could be reached, McHenry said it can be “a matter of hours or days”.

Each side wants to wrest a victory from the other on these points of tension and limit the rupture at the political level.

tight deadline

The pressure around the negotiations is greater than the compromise, which once reached must be endorsed in Congress by the Senate and the House of Representatives.

However, many legislators absent for the long weekend could be called back to Washington urgently.

There is also the threat that an agreement will not be reached in Congress, as legislators from both parties have threatened, or of delaying as long as possible the approval of a text that would make too many concessions to the opposing camp.

On Friday, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, said that reaching an agreement was “critical” for the global economy, while emphasizing that the United States needed to do “more to reduce their public debt”.

Source: AFP