washington. nbc news learning that president biden and house speaker kevin mccarthy spoke on the phone in the last hour. this comes as negotiations are working into the night as the u.s. inches closer to reaching the june 5th deadline to kevin mccarthy told reporters he remained hopeful a deal could be reached today. house republicans are pressuring mccarthy to slash government spending in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. if mccarthy loses just a few republican votes, he will need support from some democrats. he s also the first major policy fight since democratic congressman hakeem jeffries became the democratic leader. quote, of the four congressional leaders, mr. jeffries has the least power, but he might also have the greatest challenge, because it is clear that house democrats will be essential to push any debt limit bill over the finish line in the majority position in the white house. though mr. jeffries has had little direct sway in the talks, mccarthy is well aware tha
i mean, they only control the house, they don t control the senate. they don t control the presidency, and they think they can sort of go in there and possibly ruin the economy and make it bad for biden and ruined the u.s. credit rating. i don t think i think they re a lot of republicans who don t want that and hopefully the biden administration will be able to get those republicans to sign on but i think you re going to likely have a compromise. you may have people like matt gaetz, like chip roy, the kind of people who want to block the federal government. those people might not sign on and i think that s a real possibility. just to go back to something you said, he said this is a test for two new leaders in the house. the self-made crisis on the part of mccarthy. talk to me about that, but also the position that this then leaves congressman jeffries and as the leader of the house democrats. yes, that s right. the self-made crisis is so important here because we can t over empha
here. there is a legislative process to enact work requirement changes, to change social security, medicare, medicaid. there is an annual budgeting process that republicans are currently involved. and they can shut down departments with an annual budget appropriations strategy. but they are choosing to hold hostage the nations good faith and credit, good faith and credit. tried to expect the cause they can right now. that s the bad faith negotiations. what does it mean for jeffries? look, biden needs a deal as well. one for the future of the country, but also politically doesn t help anybody if we see a collapse. ultimately, whatever deal is struck, joe biden is going to say the jeffries and the democratic caucus, hey, i need some of you to lend votes to republicans because they are not going to keep all of them. but that will be democrats acting in good faith. alicia, it puts kevin mccarthy in an awful bind. he s got five votes hanging on to the speakership. if he abandons five or ten
back, let us know. we will be here, we will be watching. i know you now live at capitol hill. let s bring in our panel, molly jong-fast is a special caught this on for vanity fair and the host of fast politics podcast. david jolly is a former republican congressman for florida and an msnbc political analyst. congressman julie, i m going to guess is one of these because where you don t miss being in congress. and i want you to tell me as someone who has been through this process, you have nbc news reporting for president biden, the speaker mccarthy just spoke on the phone in the last hour. how much of this gets done by those negotiators around the table that we watch walking into the capitol in their speakers to duke it all out and how much of the work actually gets done when the president and the speaker on the phone? it s a matter of sequence, alicia, and look, my first that lead mitch as a staffer was raising it from 4.7 trillion to 5.1 trillion. we re now in the 30. so i have be