WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s meeting with the top four leaders in Congress planned for Friday has been postponed until next week, three sources told NBC News.
“Staff will continue working and all the principals agreed to meet early next week,” a White House spokesperson said.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy said all parties agreed to the postponement and that it should not be read as a sign that talks are falling apart. “We are going to meet again,” he said, adding that the group believes it will be most productive to “let the staff meet again tomorrow.”
A source familiar with the meetings added, “This is a positive development. Meetings are progressing. Staff is continuing to meet and it wasn’t the right moment to bring it back to principals.”
Congressional leaders met at the White House on Tuesday, in a meeting that was described as “tense and serious” by a source in the room and did not result in a deal. Staff for congressional leadership and the White House have been meeting daily since.
Recent meetings and staff-level White House talks with the divided Congress have yielded little progress and no apparent path to resolving a potential default that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned could come as early as June 1.
Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries remain adamant that the threat of default, which would be catastrophic for the U.S. economy, be taken off the table and that any negotiations be left to talks over the federal budget.
McCarthy, meanwhile, isn’t budging on his refusal to extend the debt limit without conditions, demanding spending cuts. He has the support of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, even as both Republican leaders say they do not want to see the country default.
A wild card in the already tense standoff is former President Donald Trump, the de facto leader of the Republican Party, who poured fuel on the fire this week by egging on an unprecedented default unless Democrats surrender to GOP policy demands and slash spending in a CNN town hall.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Alexandra Bacallao contributed.
