Washington (AFP) - US President Joe Biden said he was "optimistic" as he met Monday with top Republican Kevin McCarthy for their first one-on-one talks in months, with just 10 days left to avert a calamitous debt default.
The White House meeting came after Biden returned from a trip to Asia early to hammer out a deal ahead of the US Treasury's June 1 cutoff date for Congress to authorize more borrowing.
"I am optimistic we are going to make some progress," Biden said as they sat down, adding both sides understood they have "a significant responsibility" to solve the impasse.
McCarthy told reporters that "we do have disagreements (but) I think at the end of the day we can find common ground."
Debt limits are raised periodically to cover repayments on loans that have already been approved and spent, but House Republicans are insisting this time that averting a default must be paired with deep cuts to bring down the country's $31.8 trillion debt.
The on-again, off-again discussions sputtered through the weekend, with McCarthy's team and White House negotiators meeting for more than two hours on Sunday night and another three on Monday.
'Red line'
Biden and McCarthy also spoke by phone Sunday as the president flew home from a G7 summit in Japan, with the House speaker describing the call as "productive."
Republicans insist on spending less money in fiscal year 2024 than 2023, calling it a "red line."
The White House has offered a freeze for 2024 in exchange for Republicans supporting tax increases for corporations and wealthy Americans but McCarthy has rejected the idea.
The Biden administration has offered to limit spending on some domestic programs but wants the Pentagon to share in the cuts.
Republicans have pushed for boosted military and border security spending, with major rollbacks to non-defense programs.
Disputes also remain over what a White House official characterized as increasingly hard-line Republican demands for beefed-up work requirements for social welfare programs.
Biden points out that Republicans raised the borrowing cap three times under his predecessor Donald Trump without threatening to default on the country's debt obligations.
If lawmakers fail to raise the borrowing cap, the government will careen into default for the first time in history, with potentially catastrophic results.
Many experts say that in a worst-case scenario global stock markets would melt down as the US economy lurches into a downwards spiral, killing millions of jobs.
June 1 deadline
The president is being pressured by progressives in his party to rely on the US Constitution's 14th Amendment -- which states that the validity of public debt "shall not be questioned" -- to bypass Congress and increase the limit on his own.
But he and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen cautioned that the courts would not be able to resolve any legal disputes quickly enough to meet the deadline.
Yellen sent a letter to Congress on Monday warning again that the United States could find itself unable to pay its bills as soon as June 1.
Even if McCarthy and Biden can hammer out a broad deal, anything they agree to will need to be shepherded through the House of Representatives, where they face pressure from hardliners on both sides not to make too many concessions.
Further complicating the timeline, the Senate is out this week, while the House is slated to be in recess Friday ahead of Memorial Day weekend.
Republican negotiator Patrick McHenry said the talks were at "a very sensitive point."
"I'm concerned about getting a deal that can pass the House, the Senate, and signed by the president.It's a complicated piece of math," he told reporters.
