With the House and Senate only scheduled to be in session for seven days at the same time prior to June 1st, President Joe Biden finally met with House and Senate leadership to discuss raising the debt ceiling, and little progress was made, but the president did leave the door open to solving the crisis while avoiding congressional drama. On Tuesday, President Biden sat down with Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-California), House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) in an attempt to come to an agreement on the best way to raise the debt ceiling before the US defaults, something Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said could happen as early as June 1st. The Republican lawmakers still hold the belief that raising the debt ceiling should be accompanied with spending cuts like those in the bill the House GOP passed in late April, while the Democrats maintained that avoiding a default should be bipartisan with a clean debt ceiling increase, with no spending cuts attached. President Biden is meeting again with the top four congressional leaders on Friday to make another attempt at an agreement.
President Biden on Tuesday said he has been looking at the 14th Amendment as a way to unilaterally work around the debt ceiling, though he acknowledged it will not be a viable short-term solution with the nation on track to default without congressional action by June. The referenced clause in the 14th amendment states that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” Many legal experts have argued that this clause makes a default, and thus the debt ceiling law leading to that default unconstitutional.
The Senate and House are both in session today. The Senate is expected to take up a number of nominations including confirmation of the nomination of L. Felice Gorordo to be United States Alternate Executive Director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, confirmation of the nomination of Glenna Laureen Wright-Gallo to be Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services at the Department of Education, confirmation of nomination of Colleen Joy Shogan to be Archivist of the United States and confirmation of the nomination of Geeta Rao Gupta to be Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues.
The House met at 12:00 P.M. for legislative business and began consideration of H.R. 2 – Secure the Border Act of 2023. The White House on Monday issued a veto threat for the House Republican-sponsored measure to address immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, days before the end of the pandemic-era Title 42 is expected to prompt a surge of migrants. A statement of administration policy said that while the Biden administration supports productive efforts to reform the country’s immigration system, it opposes the Secure the Border Act of 2023, which it said would make “elements of our immigration system worse.”
