The Hill News

Top White House economist Austan Goolsbee said he believes the Obama administration and Republicans will strike a deal that will enable passage of legislation to raise the nation’s debt-ceiling.

Vice President Joe Biden is leading high-stakes talks with a handful of Capitol Hill Democrats and Republicans aimed at forging an agreement to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling and reduce long-term deficits.

“I’m kind of encouraged, if you look on both sides â€" you’ve got leaders on both sides of the aisle saying they don’t want to push it all the way to August,” said Goolsbee, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, on Bloomberg’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.”

“They want to do it by July 4th. And so I think . . . the negotiations are going reasonably well. I think we’ll find a solution to that,” he added on the program airing this weekend, according to a transcript.

The Treasury Department has set! an Aug. 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling, and says the nation will suffer a “catastrophic” default if action is not taken by that date.

Goolsbee warned that the talks should not extend into the eleventh hour. “I really think it’s a bad idea to push it right up to the Aug. 2 deadline. That really plays with fire,” he said.

Republicans are pushing for steep spending cuts, but Goolsbee warned that sacrificing certain White House priorities would be harmful. He cautioned not to “skimp on the growth strategy.”

“In the short term, if we cut education and training, if we cut R&D and innovation spending, if we’re cutting the kinds of investments that we need to make for us to grow, we’re making a mistake,” Goolsbee said.

Goolsbee is leaving the White House this summer to return to teaching at the University of Chicago.