WASHINGTON – Today on the floor, U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) discussed President Biden and Speaker McCarthy’s meeting today on the debt ceiling and urged Biden to negotiate with Republicans. Excerpts of Sen. Cornyn’s remarks are below, and video can be found here.

“The one thing that President Biden and Speaker McCarthy agree on is that we cannot breach the debt ceiling.”

“With the potential default on the horizon, this topic has gotten a lot of attention, but – as we all know – America’s debt crisis didn’t appear overnight.” 

“Washington has spent and spent with no meaningful steps to balance the budget.”

“In the last two years, our Democratic colleagues have spent another two-and-a-half trillion-plus dollars in purely partisan spending bills, the so-called American [Rescue Plan] Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. More than two-and-a-half trillion dollars in partisan spending, and the President takes the position that he won’t even negotiate on the debt ceiling.” 

“President Biden can roll out as many ultimatums as he wants, but the reality is his party no longer controls all the levers of government like it has during the last two years, and in order to avoid a debt crisis, which he said is nonnegotiable, he’s going to have to work with Republicans.”

“Today’s meeting with Speaker McCarthy is a start, but at minimum, I hope the President will walk back his statement about not negotiating and understand that he has no choice but to work with Republicans – just like Speaker McCarthy has no choice but to work with President Biden. That’s the nature of divided government that the voters gave us with the midterm elections, and we need to get serious about workable solutions.”