Biden says ‘confident’ of reaching deal to avoid default

“I am confident that we will reach an agreement on the budget and that America will not default,” Biden told the Roosevelt Room of the White House. He said he and the MPs would come together “because there is no alternative.”

Biden’s comments came just before he left Washington for the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima, Japan, and a day after he called a second Oval Office meeting with congressional leaders to determine how to handle the debt default. To be stopped

The president and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., tasked a handful of negotiators to try and close a final deal with talks set to begin late Tuesday. Among those present are Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president; Louisa Terrell, director of legislative affairs for the administration and Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Rep. Garrett Graves, R-La., a close McCarthy aide.

“I think at the end of the day we don’t have a loan default,” McCarthy told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday. “The problem is that the timeline is too short.”

Negotiators are scrambling to strike a deal that would open a further path to raise the debt limit until June 1, when the Treasury Department says the US could start defaulting on its obligations and trigger financial chaos. Is.

The national debt currently stands at $31.4 trillion. An increase in the debt ceiling would not authorize new federal spending; It would only allow debt to be paid off that Congress has already approved.