House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, abandoned efforts Saturday night to reach a comprehensive debt-reduction deal worth more than $4 trillion in savings, telling President Obama that a midsize package was the only politically possible alternative to avoid a first-ever default on the nation's mounting national debt.
WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, abandoned efforts Saturday night to reach a comprehensive debt-reduction deal worth more than $4 trillion in savings, telling President Obama that a midsize package was the only politically possible alternative to avoid a first-ever default on the nation's mounting national debt.
Boehner told Obama — who is hosting a key meeting Sunday evening on the debt issue — that their efforts to "go big," as the speaker says, were stymied by the toughest issues: taxes and entitlements.
Democrats continued to insist on tax reforms that would not pass muster in the conservative-dominated House of Representatives, and Republicans wanted cuts to programs such as Medicare and Social Security that Obama and Senate Democrats would oppose.
"Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt-reduction agreement without tax hikes. I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt-limit increase," Boehner said in a statement released less than 24 hours before the Obama meeting is to take place.
Without a lifting of the debt ceiling, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said that by Aug. 2 the nation will begin to default on the more than $14.3 trillion in outstanding debts the nation has collected after decades of runaway deficit spending.
The impasse on the massive plan leaves Obama and congressional negotiators back at the smaller package, which includes cuts to federal agency budgets and more modest reforms to entitlement programs.
Poster Comment:
Every bit as leftist, and a big government globalist as hObama. Typical D & R traitor.
