Democratic leaders said Tuesday’s White House meeting on the debt ceiling was “much more cordial” than last week’s meeting with Republicans and President Joe Biden – and that “we all agreed that default is not an acceptable option.”
“Look, it was a good and productive meeting,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters outside the Oval Office late Tuesday afternoon. “Everyone agreed that default would be the worst outcome, a horrible situation for America and America’s families.”
That’s a change from last week, when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reportedly refused to take defaulting off the table. Schumer said the leaders agreed, “that we need to pass a bipartisan bill with bipartisan support in both chambers,” in order to raise the debt limit. He said that McCarthy also agreed the bill needed to be bipartisan.
“And his bill, of course, is not a bipartisan bill,” Schumer said, “so the bottom line is that we all came to agreement that we were going to continue discussions in the way that I believe Speaker McCarthy described, which was agreed to by all of us in the room together, and hopefully we can come to an agreement.”
Schumer said that the only way for negotiations on the debt limit to move forward is for both parties to find common ground.
“We’re not going to get into negotiations out here. We have to come to common ground,” Schumer said. “That is the only way this is ever gotten done. It has never gotten done with one party saying, ‘You have to do it my way.’ You have to get both parties in both houses together.”
Schumer said that during the meeting with Biden, leaders from both sides agreed that a default would be “a disaster. Full stop.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also described the meeting as “positive,” and said it was “much more cordial,” than the last meeting. The talks, he said, were “honest, and real discussions about differences that we have on a whole variety of issues, but it was all respectful.”
When asked by a reporter what that common ground could look like, Schumer responded, “you’ll know it when you see it.”
“What that means is that we will not sacrifice our values, they’ll probably not sacrifice their values, but we’ll have to come together on something that can avoid default,” he said.
Schumer added that leaders are closer to reaching a deal stating, “it was a much more cordial meeting. There were honest and real discussions about differences that we have on a whole variety of issues. But it was all respectful. And that was a good sign as well.”
