Debt Dilemma, Debate Deepen

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

News, Daily News, Politics

4.4 • 25.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2023

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After cutting short his trip to Asia, President Biden returned to Washington to meet with Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to try and hash out terms over increasing the country's debt limit. Where are they finding common ground, and what still needs to be resolved?

This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, reporter Barbara Sprunt, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.

The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Melanie in Big Sur, California, where I'm with a team from the Oregon Zoo watching some of the once nearly extinct California condors
0:09.2	We raised sore above us. Oh, this podcast was recorded at 11.43 a.m. on Monday, May 22nd.
0:16.8	Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we'll still be in awe of this magnificent bird returning to our skies.
0:24.0	Okay, here's the show. Nice.
0:30.2	A wonderful achievement in a very beautiful place.
0:33.0	It's very nice. Hey there. It's the MPR Politics podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.
0:38.5	I am Barbara Sprent. I cover Congress and I'm Mara Lias and National Political Correspondent and high stakes
0:44.8	negotiations over raising the nation's debt limit continue this week.
0:49.3	The US government is getting closer to that X state the day where the country doesn't have enough money to pay its bills and could
0:57.2	Default on its debt Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says that will happen sometime in early June.
1:03.2	Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden remain pretty far apart in negotiating a deal to avoid that default.
1:09.8	So Barbara, a lot of on again off again developments over the weekend catches up from what happened between Friday to this morning.
1:18.1	Yes, and as I think about this, I'm like, okay, so today is Monday.
1:22.3	So yes, lots of starts and stop on the negotiating front.
1:26.0	Remember, Speaker McCarthy and President Biden along with other top congressional leaders have now met twice on this, you know, at the White House.
1:34.8	And they're separately having McCarthy's designated negotiators and some of President Biden staff do like the main duking it out in terms of negotiating talks before the principles get together again, which McCarthy and Biden will do today.
1:50.1	There was a series of kind of toggling back and forth between everyone saying we're feeling very optimistic.
1:56.5	Yes, it's early, you know, it's still early in negotiations and there's still a bit of distance, but we feel optimistic.
2:03.1	We're not going to default.
2:04.7	And then you toggle that back and forth between a lot of statements from Biden and also from some of the GOP negotiators that said there's so much daylight between us.
2:14.5	Like we're in a bad situation and at some point they walked away from the negotiation.
2:19.9	So it's been interesting and long 72 hours.
	...

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