Biden: Preventing A First-Ever Government Default
President Biden said that America will not default on its debt.
Biden was Monday’s KVML “Newsmaker of the Day”. Here are his words:
“I wanted to say a word about the status of negotiations with the Congressional leaders. We had a productive meeting yesterday and — with all four leaders of the Congress.
It was civil and respectful. And everyone came to the meeting, I think, in good faith.
I’m confident that we’ll get the agreement on the budget, that America will not default. And every leader in the room understands the consequences if we fail to pay our bills. And it would be catastrophic for the — for the American economy and the American people if we didn’t pay our bills.
And I’m confident everyone in the room agreed, with the Speaker — from the Speaker to the Majority Leader to the — Majority Leader in the House and the Senate — excuse me — the Majority Leader in the Senate, the Minority Leader in the Senate, as well as the Leader — the Democratic Leader in the House, that we’re going to come together, because there’s no alternative to do the right thing for the country. We have to move on.
And to be clear, this negotiation is about the outlines of what the budget will look like, not about whether or not we’re going to, in fact, pay our debts.
The leaders have all agreed we will not default. Every leader has said that.
And I’m proud of the progress my administration has made. We’ve reduced the deficit in the first two years by $1.7 trillion in the first two years. And I’ve proposed a budget that will reduce another $3 trillion over the next decade. That includes more revenue by asking the wealthy and large corporations to begin to pay — pay their fair share and cutting subsidies that exist in the law now to Big Oil and Big Pharma.
Yesterday, we all agreed that both the Speaker McCarthy and I would designate senior members that we would negotiate to give our authority to make agreements and detail on what we wanted. So we narrowed the group. We narrowed the group to meet and hammer out our differences.
And we’ve done that. In fact, they’ve met last night, and they’re going to be meeting again today. And — and I’ll be in constant contact with my team while I’m at the G7. And I’ll be in close touch with Speaker McCarthy and other leaders as well.
I made clear that — and I’ll say it again: America is not a deadbeat nation. We pay our bills.
The nation has never defaulted on its debt, and it never will.
And we’re going to continue these discussions with Congressional leaders in the coming days until we reach an agreement.
So, thank you very much.”
The “Newsmaker of the Day” is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.
