President Joe Biden summoned congressional leaders to the White House tomorrow to try to prevent a $31.5 trillion national debt default that could occur as early as June 1st.

“Someone has to come in there with a plan,” one that is realistic, not ideological, says former Democratic Senator Kent Conrad, who helped negotiate the 2011 debt crisis.

“Republicans don’t want to increase revenues. Democrats don’t want to touch rights. The harsh reality is that you have to have both,” adds Mr. Conrad. “It requires a bipartisan commitment and a bipartisan approach.”

The scale of the problem is hard to imagine, but the economists who held recent congressional hearings tried to put it into perspective: a million dollars in hundred-dollar bills can fit in a backpack; By comparison, America’s $31.46 trillion debt would take up 31½ football fields with construction pallets stacked in two rows, each containing bills totaling $100 million. Another expert noted that within 30 years, interest on debt could consume 70% to 100% of US income.

The Housing Caucus has proposed raising the debt ceiling until the end of 2023 to avoid a default and appointing a commission to clean up the country’s financial house.

As the United States approaches default on its record debt, Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at his dinner table.

He is not made of money. His parents, survivors of the Depression, lived within their means. So is his state, which is tasked by the constitution with balancing its budget. Now he’s calling on the nation to do the same, armed with a bottle of Welch’s grape jelly in a city where dining out is the rule.

Congressman Burchett was one of four Republicans in the House of Representatives who voted two weeks ago against a GOP bill that would raise the national debt limit by $1.5 trillion in exchange for spending cuts to help clean up the nation’s financial system. The debt is currently just under $31.5 trillion.

“I didn’t vote for [raising the debt limit] under Trump, and I thought it would be very disingenuous if I did it here,” spokesman Burchett says in a phone interview, pointing out that even under this latest Republican plan, the debt will continue to rise by about $1.5 trillion. dollars every year. “It will destroy this country.”

Tomorrow, Congressional leaders will meet with President Joe Biden at the White House to try to prevent a debt default that will occur if the limit is not raised and could have long-term implications for the US economy and its global position. The deeper issue is how to better balance spending and income as America’s mounting debt, which blames everyone from the war on terrorism to Trump’s tax cuts to pandemic spending, exceeds World War II for the first time.

(Reuters) – Progress in reducing deaths during pregnancy, childbirth and newborns has stalled since 2015, and more than 60 countries are on track to miss the 2030 targets at current rates, the World Health Organization said in a report released Tuesday.

The COVID-19 pandemic, poverty and worsening humanitarian crises have put pressure on already under pressure health systems, the UN agency said in a statement.

There have been about 290,000 maternal deaths each year since 2015, 1.9 million stillbirths and 2.3 million newborn deaths within a month of birth, the report said.

The total is one death every seven seconds, “mostly from preventable or treatable causes if proper care has been provided,” the WHO said.

Countries must increase investment in primary health care to see different results, said Anshu Banerjee, WHO director of maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and aging.

In 2014, more than 190 countries supported a plan to reduce stillbirths and preventable infant deaths, and then set global targets such as reducing the maternal mortality rate to less than 70 per 100,000 live births.

According to the report, projections point to the need to accelerate progress towards these targets, which could help save at least 7.8 million lives by 2030 if met.

Between 2000 and 2010, progress was faster than at any time since then, the report said that lack of funding was to blame among the main reasons. It states that only 12% of the 106 reporting countries have fully funded maternal and newborn health plans.

The report also notes that only 61% of reporting countries have stillbirth tracking systems in place.

The report found that the 10 countries with the highest levels of maternal, stillbirth and neonatal deaths accounted for 60% of all such deaths in the world.

According to the report, in 2020, India, Nigeria and Pakistan were the leaders in this list.

(Reporting by Aditya Samal in Bangalore; editing by Nancy Lapid and Bill Burcroth)