#GOP’s debt-ceiling stance ‘unacceptable’ [Video]

President Joe Biden said Sunday the GOP’s current stance on debt-ceiling talks was “quite frankly unacceptable” before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington DC, dropping an optimistic tone as negotiations continue to flounder.

“Now it’s time for the other side to move from their extreme positions,” President Biden said during a press conference before his departure from Hiroshima, where he spent recent days meeting with world leaders at a G-7 leaders summit.

Biden aims to speak with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy by phone Sunday morning as he heads back to Washington.

As negotiators seek to avoid a default that could shake markets and send the economy into a recession within days, the talks are stuck in an apparent breakdown. Both sides are offering mutual recriminations and strikingly similar assessments.

“The White House is moving backward in negotiations,” Speaker McCarthy tweeted Saturday evening just about 90 minutes before the White House released a statement saying the latest GOP offer “was a big step back.”

As recently as Saturday in Japan, Biden had downplayed the troubles in the talks, saying “it’s a negotiation, it goes in stages.”

But negotiators didn’t even meet on Saturday and substantive talks Sunday are unlikely after McCarthy told reporters he didn’t think progress was possible until Biden is back in the United States.

“My guess is he’ll want to deal directly with me,” Biden said of McCarthy.

Talks stuck over spending and revenues

A key sticking point among many in the talks: spending levels.

The GOP proposal passed in April would cut discretionary spending to 2022 levels and then impose a 1% cap on future increases.

It’s a clear sticking point with McCarthy saying Friday if Democrats “think we’re going to spend more money next year than the year we did this year, that’s not right and that’s not going to happen.”

The White House has shot back in recent days that Republicans are refusing to negotiate enough from their initial debt ceiling proposal, which passed the House but was dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

“President Biden will not accept a wish list of extreme MAGA priorities,” said White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt.

Biden and his team also continue to pitch raising revenue by closing certain tax loopholes – especially provisions around the fossil fuel and cryptocurrency sectors – even as Republicans flatly reject the ideas.

“There’s a lot of things that they refuse to entertain and they just said revenue is off the table. Well, revenue is not off table and so that is what we continue to have a significant disagreement on,” Biden said Sunday. he added that he is willing to cut spending in addition to his revenue ideas.

The talks have also been hampered by partisan divides across a range of issues, from new work requirements that the GOP is proposing around social programs to energy permitting reform to efforts to “claw back” unspent COVID relief money.

While Biden has been traveling, Friday’s talks were briefly put on “pause” before Speaker McCarthy announced just hours later on Fox News that his negotiators were headed back into the room. “But it is very frustrating,” he said.

The remarks also come amid growing energy on the left around two long-shot ideas to short-circuit negotiations, including a discharge petition as well as growing support for a legally questionable maneuver around the 14th amendment.

Biden addressed the 14th Amendment option again Sunday, saying he continues to look at the idea and “I think we have the authority.” But he also reiterated a concern that if he took the controversial step, it would be held up in litigation.

“The question is could it be done and invoked in time,” said Biden, who is scheduled to arrive back at the White House late Sunday night.

Ben Werschkul is Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance.

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