Joe Biden said Tuesday, May 16, optimistic about the possibility of avoiding a default of the United States, which could occur in two weeks, but the Republican opposition was more cautious, after a meeting at the White House.

"There is still work to be done on several difficult issues," but Biden is "optimistic" about reaching a "reasonable budget deal," the White House said in a statement. The US president will speak again this week by phone with the main leaders of Congress. He will see them in person after returning Sunday from a trip to Japan for the G7 meeting.

In a sign of the urgency and difficulty of the discussions, Joe Biden has canceled the major diplomatic tour he was to make in the wake of Papua New Guinea and Australia, announced the White House.

On the Republican side, however, the tone was more cautious. This meeting was "a little more productive" than the previous one, on May 9, said Kevin McCarthy, Republican leader of the House of Representatives, held by a narrow conservative majority. On it depends, in large part, the short-term financial fate of the United States.

"Our positions are still far apart, but what has changed during this meeting is that the president has selected two people from his administration to negotiate directly with us," he told reporters back in Congress. "This does not mean that we will reach an agreement," but that "the process is improved," he said.

However, "I am not more optimistic," said Kevin McCarthy, two weeks before the fateful date of a possible default of the world's largest economy, an unprecedented scenario and potentially dramatic consequences.

'Catastrophic'

In the context of a presidential campaign, and generally of great political tensions, neither the American president, candidate for a second term, nor the conservative tenor, want to be the one to blink first.

The White House has multiplied warnings about a possible default, a situation in which the federal state would be unable to pay a single penny, whether it is to pay salaries, pay social benefits, repay its creditors. It would be "catastrophic" and "devastating for America and, frankly, the entire world," Biden said in a video posted on Twitter before the meeting.

This unprecedented scenario of a US default threatens as early as June 1 if no agreement is reached in Congress to raise the authorized public debt ceiling.

"We urge that an agreement be reached quickly so that the country can avoid this potentially devastating scenario," urged more than 140 CEOs of US companies, including those of giants Pfizer, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs, in an open letter sent Tuesday to the White House and congressional leaders.

The parliamentary calendar further complicates matters. The House of Representatives and the Senate, which together make up Congress, and which must similarly vote on the debt, sit at the same time, until June 1, for only four days.

Multiple options

The US Congress must regularly - this is a specificity of the country - raise the maximum ceiling of public debt. But Kevin McCarthy's Republicans refuse to vote in this direction until Joe Biden accepts major budget cuts.

Officially, the White House refuses to negotiate on raising the debt ceiling, long a routine procedure and which, according to Joe Biden, should not be politicized since the debt has been accumulated by governments on both sides.

But, in reality, several options are on the table. Republicans and Democrats could thus agree that tens of billions of dollars planned to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, but never used, be canceled, in order to reduce public spending.

Also under discussion, according to the American press: the allocation of permits in the field of energy, and the tightening of the conditions for granting certain social benefits. The latter option has sparked outrage from some of the most left-wing Democratic elected officials, such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, who denounced Tuesday on Capitol Hill "an outright attempt to deprive people of benefits they depend on to survive."

With AFP

The summary of the week France 24 invites you to look back on the news that marked the week

I subscribe

Take international news with you everywhere! Download the France 24 app