WASHINGTON, United Sates - President Joe Biden said that Democratic and Republican negotiators were on the verge of resolving a debt ceiling standoff, as the deadline for a potentially catastrophic US default was pushed back to 5 June.
Earlier, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the dreaded X-date, when the government runs out of money unless it can borrow, will now be 5 June, not 1 June. Yellen, however, warned that the deadline extension does not change the urgency. Democrats, however, would have to offer concessions on Republican demands for sweeping spending limits on social safety and other domestic programs.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates asserted that Republicans were willing to put at risk "over eight million jobs unless they can take food out of the mouths of hungry Americans." Yet Wally Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary, told CNN that both Biden and McCarthy were focused on avoiding catastrophe.
This year, the increasingly hard-right Republican Party has decided to turn the debt ceiling into leverage to force Biden to roll back favorite Democratic spending priorities.