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meeting takes place later today. joining us is a white house reporter, good morning. set the stage is far as expectations are concerned and how higher expectations? guest: they are very low. this is their first meeting in three months, i do not want to be too much of a pessimist about it. there are talks going on. to recap the positions, biden is saying there should not be a debt ceiling standoff related to spending. he thinks mccarthy is holding the debt limit hostage for a spending deal. mccarthy says ending spending deal for his members are contingent on the debt ceiling talks. so they are talking past each other right now. i think we will get more of that today. if you want to take a more optimistic view, biden -- he says they will talk today about

what they want to do in terms of spending. the budget deficit is a big number, both parties are worried about it. the problem they have is they have pretty opposite paths for shrinking it. you can shrink it into two ways or mix in two ways. republicans are focused on spending cuts, biden is focused on tax increases for corporations and high earners. that is the standoff they are in right now, it is a big number. host independent think tanks think this needs to be addressed. debt service costs, that is the amount we pay in interest to maintain it, they are forecast to exceed defense spending over the next decade. a significant milestone. meanwhile, the clock is ticking. depending on who you ask, the deadline could be three or four weeks from now, could be three or four months.

no one seems to have an answer and washington is so deadline driven that is the x factor. host: you said the president was starting to fudge a little bit, i want to ask if there is a softening going on, what areas could that look like? guest: they've been saying we are not here to negotiate over the debt limit, that is a physician they've held for some time. if your negotiating partner thinks it is on the table, someone has to blank. i do not think either side is winking right now, but biden is saying we are not negotiating on the debt limit but i am having speaker mccarthy at the white house for a conversation. it is possible they could get the wheels rolling. we refer to what happened in the senate, republican saying we will not sign onto any plan to raise the debt limit and they clean hike, increasing it without spending reform is part of it.

that eliminated the option the senate was going to come writing over the hill and save things from the impasse between speaker mccarthy and president biden. people think there is time, some runway and they will get a deal because they are incentivized to. we often lose sight of what is at stake. the numbers we are talking about, $31 trillion in debt, something near 50 trillion at the end of 10 years. they are unfathomable numbers. i have trouble wrapping my head around them. the risk is a default. if the u.s. defaults, the cost goes up. if you are worried about the money we are spending right now, you are going to be really worried if it starts getting more expensive to have that debt and that is what would happen. markets would go down, u.s. credit rating would be downgraded. it was still downgraded when

they got too close to the edge. there can be problems in the markets even without a default. if there is a default, that gets messy quickly and that is why you are hearing conversation about these third options, things like the 14th amendment. host: it was late last week the president floated that, the treasury secretary was asked about it. what is the white house position currently on the idea? you may want to explain it for the audience. guest: if they get to the point where they say we are going to default tomorrow, there is no deal, what do we do? in case of emergency break glass options, all of them are pretty much guaranteed to end up in court. one is the 14th amendment which the theory is the president could ignore it and start going

around it. that would be litigated. minting the coin is a trendier, more recent thing. the treasury department printing a $1 trillion coin, depositing it at the bed. republicans flirted with other options 12 years ago when we were in a similar situation, prioritization. the treasury picking and choosing what it can pay and what it will not pay to buy more time. that is difficult, people like jay powell have said that is not workable, the system is not hardwired that way. powell back then was a think tank guy going around washington. now he is the fed chair doing the same thing. these are all extreme options, i think they would only be ruled out if they got to the absolute precipice of things. i do not think anyone wants to see that happen.

will they see movement today? may be. another question is a short-term deal, kicking the can down the road for a temporary suspension of the debt limit to buy time to go through the spending process, the normal appropriations process. biden would certainly like to do that. you heard mention of the covid money, the covid emergency is lifting and some things are going with that. title 42 is going with that. travel restrictions are going away. maybe a window, given the covid emergency is lifting for movement on covid money. does that by them space to step forward on some kind of deal? host: when the president's negotiating, he is looking for some type of resolve. if he is not getting that from speaker mccarthy, he will probably not get it from senator mcconnell. who does he look to, are there republicans on the fence he

could look to as far as getting support? guest: he has tried. there has been a discharge petition that would allow house democrats to go around mccarthy. you need a handful of republicans on board and none have signaled that they would. we mentioned the senate going away. fewer than 40 republican saying they would not buy onto anything, biden might have a pass. more than 40 means they get to do as the 60 vote threshold. biden has been waiting to see what happens. there is not a guarantee mccarthy would pass the bill in the first place. a long stretch of votes needed to win the speakership has left him a precarious footing where the threshold for him facing a potential booting for the job by members is lower than it would be normally. now, it is sort of consolidated. it is the two of them is the short answer. host: about 11 working days

until the deadline, the president is supposed to travel to the g7. any talk of postponing the trip to resolve the issue? guest: no talk of that yet. a single digit days almost where the president, the speaker and senate leaders are in washington at the same time. the deadline is a moving part. we do not want to lose sight of that. a new forecast saying it could be early june, could be early august. it depends how much the treasury department is raking in in the aftermath of tax season and that sort of thing. if it is june 1, we are up against it. secretary ellen said it could be in the weeks afterwards. if you make it to mid june, other things kick in, you could get to july and maybe early august. that is the moving part. we might be up against in a few

weeks, we might not be. nobody knows and that is adding to the uncertainty. it is not reason for calm, because washington tends to only move when the chips are down, we are right up against a deadline. when no one knows what the deadline is, that does not leave incentive for them to back down or blank. host: what else do we know about? the meeting -- know about the meeting? guest: it is an interesting set up. senators are saying they are out of it, it is between biden and mccarthy. hakeem jeffries will be in the meeting. what we hear from the president afterwards, we'll speaker mccarthy come out over my shoulder to speak to reporters as he has done in the past? maybe. i would set expectations and incremental hint of movement being a positive, no one is expecting a major breakthrough.