A guide to the current crisis and how we got here
This afternoon, President Joe Biden met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in their first sit-down since February. The meeting produced no breakthroughs on the federal debt ceiling, even as a deadline for default looms in early June. I called my colleague Russell Berman, who has been watching the ongoing stalemate closely, for help creating a short guide to this moment.Debt Questions, Answered
This month’s debt-ceiling crisis comes with a dose of déjà vu. As Russell explained last week, the circumstances largely echo the 2011 showdown between congressional Republicans and then-President Barack Obama: A new GOP majority in the House is using the looming threat of a national default—which would likely lead to a stock-market crash and possibly a recession— as leverage to push a first-term Democratic president to agree to spending cuts.
But after talking with Eric Cantor, who in 2011 was the House majority leader deputized to negotiate an agreement with then–Vice President Biden, Russell reported that the crisis we’re in now is worse than that of 12 years ago.
