agree with the meeting is even about. kevin mccarthy saying this is the kickoff of negotiations, president biden holding firm to the idea that the debt limit and raising it is nonnegotiable. but this is where president biden s experience more than ten years ago as vice president comes into play. and the obama administration, he was the lead negotiator, sitting down with mccarthy s predecessor as house majority leader, eric cantor, leaders from the senate, to come up with a balanced agreement that both sides could live with to cut spending and ultimately raise the debt ceiling. as biden would later recall, republicans walked away from the table unwilling to negotiate on key things like letting the then bush tax cuts expire as part of that deal. and so i traveled with then vice president biden. once the deal was finally agreed to, only at the cost of a downgrade of the u.s. credit rating where he did fault the republicans for walking away from the table. biden s view now is republicans n