Watch: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries holds press conference ahead of debt ceiling vote

Watch as Hakeem Jeffries, minority leader of the House of Representatives, and other Democrats hold a news conference ahead of a vote on the US debt ceiling on Wednesday evening (31 May).

The House is due to vote on a bill to lift the government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, a critical step to avoid a destabilising default that could come early next week without congressional action.

Republicans control the House by a narrow 222-213 majority, meaning the bipartisan deal - agreed days ago - will need support from both Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s Republicans and Joe Biden’s Democrats to pass.

Mr McCarthy has predicted that the vote will succeed.

“It’s going to become law,” he told reporters.

Meanwhile, Mr Biden took to Twitter to outline what failure to pass the bill could mean for America.

“Our bipartisan budget agreement prevents the worst possible crisis: a default for the first time in our nation’s history – an economic recession, retirement accounts devastated, and millions of jobs lost,” he wrote.