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\"President Biden wants Congress to raise the debt limit yet again … without a single, sensible change to how government spends your hard-earned money. None. Does that sound responsible to you?\" McCarthy said. \"What Americans want -- and what Republicans are fighting for -- is a responsible debt limit increase that puts us on a path towards a healthier economy.\"

But that's a nonstarter for the Biden administration, which maintains that the debt limit must be raised without any political negotiation or bargaining, as has been done under both parties over many years.

\"It's just that simple. There should be no hostage-taking here. There should be no attempts to exploit the debt ceiling or to leverage it,\" White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing last month.

Biden has also pushed McCarthy to \"show me your budget\" -- a call for the Republican speaker to outline exactly which cuts to the federal budget he'd like to see made in exchange, given his criticism of federal spending.

McCarthy has yet to present such a budget and his remarks on Monday night again lacked details about what sorts of specific cuts he'd call for.

And while McCarthy has publicly insisted that decreasing funds for Medicare or Social Security is \"off the table,\" Democrats and the White House have pointed to the ambiguity around his plan to suggest otherwise.

\"PHOTO:
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
PHOTO: President Joe Biden speaks during the Democratic National Committee winter meeting, Feb. 3, 2023, in Philadelphia.
>

McCarthy's comments on Monday came after he and Biden discussed the debt limit and other issues at White House last week, their first meeting since McCarthy became speaker. The sit-down yielded no commitments or outcomes, but both McCarthy and Biden described it optimistically.

\"I think, at the end of the day, we can find common ground, I really do,\" McCarthy told reporters in the White House driveway.

A few minutes later, the White House released its take on the meeting, saying the two men had a \"frank and straightforward dialogue\" and that the conversation would continue.

Both parties said no concessions were made.

Separately, top Biden administration officials have indicated that the White House will negotiate on spending and the budget in parallel talks -- as long as the debt ceiling is raised without strings attached.

\"One is not appropriate for negotiation; the other one is,\" Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Sunday on ABC's \"This Week.\"

The emerging impasse echoes the 2011 debt crisis, during which the country came so close to default that its creditworthiness was downgraded for the first time in the nation's history.

\"PHOTO:
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
PHOTO: President Joe Biden speaks on the January jobs report in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex, Feb. 3, 2023, in Washington.
>

At the time, the Republican-controlled House was again looking to exact spending concessions from a Democratic president.

Months before a deal, brokered in part by then-Vice President Joe Biden and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, was passed, then-President Barack Obama addressed the nation's debt in his own State of the Union address.

Obama called for a five-year freeze to domestic spending that would \"require painful cuts\" to slow ballooning debt growth.

\"I'm willing to eliminate whatever we can honestly afford to do without,\" he said. \"But let's make sure that we're not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.\"

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