by Nandita Bose and Jarrett Renshaw

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Joe Biden and House of Representatives speaker Kevin McCarthy are close to reaching a deal on the U.S. debt ceiling, with the two sides’ positions now only $70 billion apart for discretionary spending, we learned from someone familiar with the negotiations.

While the federal government may no longer be able to make payments from the beginning of June, the Democratic tenant of the White House and the most senior Republican representative in Congress have intensified direct exchanges and via their negotiators, citing Monday a productive meeting.

According to another source briefed on the talks, the deal is expected to focus on a limited amount of funding rather than a substantial bill, hundreds of pages long, which could take days to be drafted by parliamentarians.

Negotiators should agree on the main amounts allocated to discretionary spending, in particular to fix the budget granted to the army, but let the elected representatives of Congress work out the smallest details via traditional procedures in the coming months, said the one of the sources.

No comment was obtained from the White House.

In 2022, discretionary spending in the United States had reached 1.7 trillion dollars, or 27% of all public spending which amounted to 6.27 trillion dollars, according to federal data. Nearly half of that amount was on defense, an area where Republicans refuse to cut spending.

According to one of the sources, the agreement should put in place safeguards for future budget negotiations, without detailing all the expenses.

(Reporting Jarrett Renshaw and Nandita Bose, with Trevor Hunnicutt; Jean Terzian, editing by Nicolas Delame)

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