© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speaks during her bilateral meeting with British Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt on the sidelines of the G20 finance ministers meeting outside Bangalore, India, on February 24, 2023. REUTERS/S
By David Lawder
BENGALURU (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Saturday she was willing to negotiate with Republicans in Congress over the Biden administration’s budget proposal due to be released next month, but was not as a condition for raising the debt ceiling.
Yellen told Reuters in an interview that Biden’s fiscal 2024 budget would contain “substantial deficit reduction over the next decade.”
“And we are going to show how we are going to achieve that,” he said on the sidelines of a meeting of G20 finance leaders. “Republicans need to put a plan on the table, and a negotiation or discussion on that is certainly possible, but it cannot be a condition or precondition for raising the debt ceiling.”
Republicans, who have a slim majority in the House of Representatives, have demanded that President Joe Biden agree to spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.
Yellen said the United States “can’t negotiate whether or not we’re going to pay our bills. It’s just a fundamental responsibility that a government has.”
Yellen said tax receipts collected around the April 15 filing deadline could allow for some adjustments to the department’s estimate of when it will no longer be able to pay all government bills without an increase in the debt limit to $31, 4 trillion.
The Treasury has yet to change its early June estimate for that time period, made last month, although the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that Treasury’s extraordinary cash and borrowing measures could last until September.
“Tax receipts will be informative as to when the probable X date is,” he said, referring to a common Washington term for a possible date of default. “We felt comfortable and told Congress that we could at least get there by early June.”