President Joe Biden reiterated Wednesday that he is willing to sit down with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy but not if that meeting is related to the looming debt ceiling deadline.
“Happy to meet with McCarthy but not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended,” Biden told Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich regarding a possible meeting with McCarthy. “That’s not negotiable.”
“I noticed they quote Reagan, and they quote Reagan all the time, and they quote Trump. Both of which said, I’m paraphrasing, it would be an absolute crime to not extend the debt limit.”
Biden has threatened to veto a bill that House Republicans are expected to pass Wednesday that aims to raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion, or until the end of March 2024, but would also cap discretionary government spending at fiscal year 2022 levels.
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On the left, Democrats have insisted on nothing but a “clean” debt ceiling increase without attaching spending cuts.
“The speaker’s [Limit, Save, Grow Act] is an attack on American manufacturing, American law enforcement and American families all in the name of making it easier [for the] richest Americans to cheat on their taxes and paying for even more tax giveaways that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations,” White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson told Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
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McCarthy told reporters that he expected the vote to come Wednesday but did not say whether he had 218 votes to get it over the line. With his razor-thin majority, McCarthy can afford to lose four GOP votes at most to pass what’s shaping up to be his largest test as speaker yet.
GOP leaders tweaked the bill overnight to assuage concerns from key Republican factions that appeared ready to oppose it. The changes would soften their repeal of biofuel tax credits – a significant concern for midwestern Republicans whose districts rely on ethanol production – and move the legislation’s planned activation of work requirements for federal benefits up from 2025 to 2024.
The bill is highly unlikely to pass the Democrat-held Senate, and if it did, it would run into Biden’s promise to veto.
Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.