On Saturday, a reporter asked President Biden about the debt ceiling situation at the G-7 conference in Hiroshima, Japan. The president instructed a reporter to “shush up” when asked about the problem, which may lead to a U.S. default if Congress fails to reach an accord.
“I still believe we’ll be able to avoid a default and we’ll get something decent done,” Biden told reporters while sitting down for a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. “This — this goes in stages,” he said of negotiations between House Republicans and the White House, which broke down on Friday without an agreement in place. Republicans have passed a debt limit bill and are content with raising the limit in exchange for spending cuts, while Democrats have pushed for a clean increase.
When an Australian journalist attempted to ask President Biden a question about the situation, the president told him to “shush up, okay?”
“I’ve been in these negotiations before,” Biden said. “What happens is the first meetings weren’t all that progressive. The second ones were. The third one was. And then, what happens is they — the carriers go back to the principals and say, ‘This is what we’re thinking about.’ And then, people put down new claims.”
WATCH IT UNFOLD:
Biden tells a reporter to “shush up” while being grilled on the debt limit.pic.twitter.com/4i5usSP4qc
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) May 20, 2023
The deadline for Biden and Speaker McCarthy (R-CA) to reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling is June 1. The Treasury has issued a warning that it will be unable to meet its $31 trillion in debt obligations on that day.
Last month, House Republicans backed a bill to increase the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion in return for budget cutbacks. The Limit, Save, and Grow Act proposes increasing the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion or until the end of March 2024, whichever occurs first. Discretionary expenditure would be capped at 2012 levels under the bill’s provisions, and spending increases would be capped at 1% for the following decade.