By MEREDITH SHINER & CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN
President Barack Obama signaled on Friday that he is ready to take over the debt-limit negotiations, summoning Senate leaders to the White House next week as the continuing impasse pushes the country closer to a potential default.
Obama will meet separately with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday. The meetings follow the collapse Thursday of talks between Vice President Joe Biden and congressional leaders.
The sticking point, as expected, is taxes. Democrats argue that any deal to reduce the deficit and raise the country’s borrowing limit must include new revenues. Republicans say they won’t go there.
“The president is willing to make tough choices, but he cannot ask the middle class and seniors to bear all the burden for deficit reduction and to sacrifice while millionaires and billionaires and special interests get off the hook,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday. That’s not “a fair and balanced approach.”
Meanwhile, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the “realities of the situation” are that the House won’t pass any deal that involves raising new revenues, and the package must include budget reforms and spending cuts that exceed the amount of the debt limit increase, which is expected to top $2 trillion.
“If the president and his allies want the debt limit increased, it is only going to happen via a measure that meets these tests.,” Boehner said in a statement. “If the president puts forth such a proposal, he has my word that the House will act on it. But a measure that fails to meet these tests cannot pass the House.”
Obama and Boehner last met late Wednesday, and haven’t spoken since House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) pulled out of the Biden talks Thursday, citing the stalemate over taxes. No more meetings are scheduled yet between the president and Boehner, Carney said, but Biden spoke Thursday and Friday with congressional Republicans and Democrats.
“We believe we can move forward as long as no one in the talks takes a my-way-or-the-highway approach,” Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One on a return flight to Washington from Pittsburgh.
When reporters pointed to Boehner’s statement as drawing a pretty hard line, Carney brushed it off. He said the White House is confident they’ll get a deal “because the American people insist that we get it done.”
But with Cantor’s departure from the Biden budget talks – followed by Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) – Democrats appeared to relish the opportunity to paint Republicans as protectors of the wealthy, corporations and special interests.
“It’s important to be clear about this. That is what is on the table when some folks talk about refusing to consider tax expenditures in the deficit reduction,” Carney said. “It’s loopholes for oil and gas companies — subsidies for oil and gas companies, loopholes for special interests, and sweeping tax cuts for the most fortunate Americans.”
Two top Democrats — Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a member of the Biden group — chided Republicans for walking away from negotiations despite Boehner’s calls for an “adult conversation.”
“The Republican Party is in disarray. The Republican Party is leaning to the extreme — and that is playing with fire,” Schumer said of the politics around the debt ceiling, which must be raised by Aug. 2 for the government to avoid defaulting on its loans. “This was not about coming to an impasse, there was just a lack of political will to support a compromise that was about to take shape.”
Van Hollen, one of four Congressional Democrats in the room with Biden, revealed Friday a bit about what had been discussed in the closely-held talks, especially on revenues — the touchy issue for the GOP that Cantor cited as his reason for leaving the table.
Democrats, Van Hollen said, had offered Republicans “a menu of options” on how to reform the tax code to achieve the desired target of $4 trillion in savings over the next 10 to 12 years, but that none of those choices were palatable to the GOP.
On that so-called “menu” of revenue options were oil subsidies, corporate jet taxes and “phasing out” of deductions and tax preferences for Americans who make more than $500,000, which Van Hollen said was “along the lines” of last winter’s bipartisan deficit commission recommendations.
“What we’ve seen on the Republican side, overall, is all take and no give. Any serious approach requires compromise and that’s going to be required to achieve the adult moment Speaker Boehner called for,” Van Hollen said. “Until the Republicans are more worried about reducing the deficit than they are about Grover Norquist, then we’ve got a problem.”
Before talks broke down Thursday, the Biden group already reportedly had found more than $1 trillion in cuts.
The White House meetings with Reid and McConnell will be a start, but as Schumer pointed out, Republicans will need Democratic votes in the House to approve any compromise. And the same goes for Democrats in the Senate. So far, neither side seems to want to budge.
When asked whether come August, Democrats would allow the government to default if the impasse over taxes could not be resolved in time, Van Hollen said that was a question for the GOP.
“You have to ask that question to the Republicans — if they’re going to allow the U.S. government to default on its obligations in order to protect tax breaks” for special interests and the wealthiest Americans, he said.
