Not so long ago, Joe Biden and Republican leader Kevin McCarthy used to talk things over at breakfast in Biden’s vice presidential home at the Naval Observatory.
Biden was intent in those days on “keeping up relations with the opposition party,” as he writes in his memoir, and the new House majority leader often arrived with fellow GOP lawmakers in tow.
But now, with a potential national debt crisis l ooming, those morning meetings in 2015 seem a political lifetime ago as Democratic President Biden and McCarthy, the new House speaker, prepare for their first official meeting Wednesday at the White House.
“You know, when I met with him as the vice president, he was always eager to sit down and talk,” McCarthy recalled to The Associated Press ahead of the meeting. “He was always a person who would like to try to find solutions, work together.”
Biden has signaled no such open-ended hospitality this time as newly emboldened House Republicans court a risky debt ceiling showdown.