US President Joe Biden will ask congressional leaders, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to act immediately and unconditionally at the White House on May 9 to raise the federal government’s borrowing limit and prevent a default. the possibility of Washington declaring a default, a White House official said yesterday Monday.

Mr Biden invited the top four members of the US Congress to meet with him at the presidency next Tuesday, hours after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the country was at risk of being forced into default “as of June 1”. .

The US is the only developed economy in the world where parliament is called upon periodically to raise the government’s borrowing limit. The much-discussed 31.4 trillion “threshold” was met in mid-January, and the US has so far avoided default thanks to temporary measures. Republicans are demanding a decade of drastic cuts in public spending, which the president refuses to even discuss, in order to agree to his increase.