Politico...
John Boehner calls
for debt deal in a month
By John Bresnahan & Jake Sherman
6/1/11
House Speaker John Boehner said he doesn’t want to run up against an
August deadline for boosting the nation’s debt limit — fearing that it
could unnerve Wall Street — but he’s refusing to back away from his
calls for major spending cuts in return for a debt deal with the White
House.
And Boehner, for the first time, said he wants to raise the limit
within one month’s time.
“I just think we’re now in June, this really needs to be done over the
next month if we’re serious about no brinksmanship, no rattling
investors,” the Ohio Republican told a group of reporters in his
Capitol office suite on Wednesday. “But I will reiterate something I’ve
said many times before: The biggest risk we face as a country is doing
nothing.”
Boehner and the House Republican Conference met with President Barack
Obama on Wednesday at the White House in a session that focused on the
debt limit, deficits and job creation. Boehner said he told Obama that
“the sooner we deal with” the debt limit, the “better off we are.”
“The president agreed,” Boehner added.
Yet Boehner’s let’s-get-a-deal-done stance masks a deeper belief within
the House Republican Conference — that Obama will back down eventually
and agree to its demands, forcing Capitol Hill Democrats to follow suit.
“Of course, it’s dangerous,” a House Republican close to Boehner said
of the politics of a government default. “But it’s dangerous for
everybody, especially the president. At the end of the day, [Obama]
will have to give in.”
“Who has egg on their face if there is a sovereign debt crisis, House
Republicans or the president?” asked another senior GOP lawmaker.
With a potential debt default by the U.S. government just two months
off, and a continued standoff between the White House and GOP
congressional leaders on how to move forward in boosting that limit,
Republican lawmakers say publicly and privately that they believe Obama
will be the one who has to cave.
Boehner and his top lieutenants — Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.)
and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — are demanding that Obama
put forth a comprehensive proposal to reduce the government’s $1.5
trillion deficit, and they are refusing to move on a debt-limit boost
until the president does so.
Despite what both sides called a “productive meeting” Wednesday,
neither offered any new proposals to break the political stalemate.
And Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) challenged Obama to
end political attacks by Democrats over Ryan’s proposal to reform
Medicare. Ryan complained that Obama has mischaracterized his proposal
to replace the government-run system for senior health care with a
privately administered program as a “voucher,” according to several
Republicans.
Obama countered by accusing the GOP of mischaracterizing his own
proposals, suggesting Republicans had deliberately distorted his health
care reforms, including a gradual $500 billion reduction in
supplemental Medicare insurance purchased by seniors.
“We pressed him repeatedly to stop the demagoguery,” Cantor told
POLITICO after the White House session. GOP leaders also asked Obama,
who was flanked by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, to “stop saying
that we don’t have the best interests of the country at heart,” Cantor
added.
“I asked the president point blank, ‘Are you going to put forth not a
speech but a plan to deal with the debt crisis that is scorable by the
Congressional Budget Office? What I got out of that was a resounding
‘no,’” said Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, who is chairman of the House
Republican Conference.
Read the rest of the story at Politico
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