US News

Senate to skip July 4 recess to continue work on debt ceiling deal

WASHINGTON — US senators will remain in Washington, D.C., for the July 4 holiday recess to continue negotiations on crafting a budget deal and increasing the nation’s debt ceiling, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced Thursday, according to FOX News Channel.

The move comes after President Barack Obama accused Republican lawmakers Wednesday of failing to compromise in negotiations on a deal, saying party leaders must “rise to the occasion” as he called Aug. 2 a “hard deadline” for reaching an agreement.

“Call me naive, but my expectation is that leaders are gonna lead,” Obama said in a news conference in the East Room of the White House, adding later that he was “very amused” by calls for him to show more leadership. “The Republicans say they want to reduce the deficit. Every single observer who’s not an elected official says we can’t reduce our deficit in the scale and scope that we need to without having a balanced approach that looks at everything.”

A group of Republicans on Wednesday pledged to block any attempt to recess the Senate for the Fourth of July holiday weekend, saying they were taking up the president’s challenge to get a deal done.

“Our country is going bankrupt, we shouldn’t be going home on a holiday,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said at a press conference.

Bipartisan talks led by Vice President Joe Biden broke up after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) pulled out of the discussions over Democrats’ push for tax increases to be part of a deal. Democrats have said any agreement must include ways to raise federal revenues.

The Treasury Department has said Congress must approve raising the $14.29 trillion debt ceiling by Aug. 2, and both parties had hoped to reach some accord on the outlines of a deal before the July 4 weekend to give Congress the month of July to fine-tune the agreement, according to DJ Newswires.