Hey, good morning. I'm Playbook co-author Rachel Bade. It's Wednesday, May 17th, and we've got a little bit of news for you this morning. Yesterday, during the debt ceiling talks at the White House, President Joe Biden agreed to a key demand by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to shrink the size of the negotiating table. McCarthy has been complaining that there are too many cooks in the kitchen with congressional

leaders from both parties and both sides of the rotunda, graming into a room with all their

aides, and basically he wanted Biden to commit to negotiating with him directly. Biden agreed,

and both sides designated people who are going to be hammering out this deal. Well, this morning, we can report

that those designees actually met on Capitol Hill last night to begin working on something specific.

So on the Democratic side, Biden chose White House counselor Steve Richetti, OMB director Shalanda Young,

and legislative affairs director, Louisa Turrell, to lead the talks for him. Notably, we were hearing

from Republicans on the Hill that they were happy with these names that he picked, especially Roshetti.

And in fact, I was leaving the Capitol yesterday afternoon when these lawmakers were at the White

House having this discussion. And the Republicans said to me specifically that he wanted Ritchetti

to get involved.

So he got his wish.

On the GOP side, McCarthy has picked his recent wingman, Garrett Graves, who you might remember this name.

He helped him actually nail down the votes to become speaker in January.

And he's also been overseeing the, quote, five families meetings.

That's the meetings where the warring caucuses of the House Republican conference get together and sort of duke out their disagreements in private.

Some more news on the debt ceiling this morning, specifically a word on McCarthy's quote

red line on talks. Yesterday afternoon, there was some news when McCarthy told reporters that

work requirements were a red line for him in negotiations.

As you'll remember, Republicans' debt-sealing bill that passed out of the House just a couple of weeks ago included a requirement that able-body adults work a certain amount of hours in order to receive food stamps and other sort of benefits from the federal government to help them.

And McCarthy said he's got to have something on that, and that's always been a no-no for Democrats.

Eugene told you earlier this week that Biden freaked out a whole bunch of Democrats when he suggested

...