Kevin McCarthy says he’ll bring Biden a ‘soft food’ lunch if it gets debt talks going

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tried a new tactic on Thursday to try to secure an invitation to the White House for talks – offering to bring the 80-year-old president a “soft lunch” to jump-start negotiations .

McCarthy made the quip at his weekly news briefing Thursday, days after warning Biden about it and penning a letter accusing him of risking a “fragile economy” with his refusal to start negotiations on House Republicans’ budget cut requests “ to have caused.

“He makes the decision that he wants to jeopardize the economy. I don’t know what else I can do and how easy — I’d take lunch to the White House,” McCarthy said. “I would make it soft food if that’s what he wants. It does not matter. Whatever it takes to meet,’ he said.

That was almost certainly a message to Biden’s advanced age. It came days after Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who’d stopped going to Democratic luncheons close to McCarthy, called her former lunch companions “old dudes eat jelly,” according to a report.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wrote a letter to President Biden smacking him for being “off the hook” on the debt limit negotiations and urging his team to hold a meeting between the two by the end of the week to agree on both

The comments followed a heated letter from McCarthy earlier this week. The two men have not met to discuss the budget dispute for two months.

Biden and the White House have called for Congress to approve another hike beyond the $31.4 trillion level – noting that Congress has already approved spending that has left the nation indebted. They also want the House GOP to release its budget plan after the House Budget Committee called for job requirements for welfare recipients and outlined other plans.

McCarthy and the House Republicans, who presented him with his speaker’s gavel, are demanding that the Biden administration cut domestic spending to follow a hike.

McCarthy wants talks to start now, before the nation faces potential fiscal disaster as early as this summer.

“With each passing day, I am incredibly concerned that you are endangering an already fragile economy by insisting on your extreme position of refusing to negotiate meaningful changes,” McCarthy Biden wrote in the letter.

‘Mister. President, simply put, you’re on the clock… Please have your team contact me by the end of this week to schedule our next meeting.’

McCarthy says he wants to bring domestic spending back to pre-inflation levels. Biden has warned he will not accept cuts to Medicare, Social Security or health services for the poor.

Biden and McCarthy met for a lunch in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day, but have not met on the budget for almost two months