President Barack Obama has urged congressional leaders to reach a “fair compromise” over the next few days to avoid a US default, and attacked a new Republican plan to increase the country’s borrowing authority in two steps as “no way to run the greatest country on earth”.
With eight days left before the US Treasury runs out of cash to pay its bills, and investors growing increasingly concerned that gridlock in Washington could hit financial markets, Mr Obama warned Americans on Monday night that the impasse could spark a “deep economic crisis”.
The president was speaking after Republican and Democratic lawmakers had spent much of Monday jousting over competing schemes to increase the country’s borrowing limit by the August 2 deadline set by the Treasury.