Boehner abruptly withdraws from talks with Obama

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama makes a state­ment in the Brady Brief­ing Room at the White House in Wash­ing­ton, Fri­day, July 22, 2011 on the break down of debt ceil­ing talks. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

DAVID ESPO

AP Spe­cial Correspondent

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker John Boehner abruptly broke off talks with Pres­i­dent Barack Obama Fri­day night on a deal to make major cuts in fed­eral spend­ing and avert a threat­ened gov­ern­ment default, send­ing already uncer­tain com­pro­mise efforts into instant crisis.

Within min­utes, an obvi­ously peeved Obama vir­tu­ally ordered con­gres­sional lead­ers to the White House Sat­ur­day morn­ing for fresh nego­ti­a­tions on rais­ing the nation’s debt limit. “We’ve got to get it done. It is not an option not to do it,” he declared.

For the first time since talks began, he declined to offer assur­ances, when asked, that default would be avoided. Moments later, how­ever, he said he was con­fi­dent of that outcome.

At a rebut­tal news con­fer­ence of his own a short while later in the Capi­tol, Boehner said, “I want to be entirely clear, no one wants default on the full faith and credit of the United States gov­ern­ment, and I’m con­vinced that we will not.”

Bar­ring action by Con­gress by an Aug 2 dead­line, the Trea­sury will be unable to pay all its bills. Offi­cials say a default could desta­bi­lize the already weak­ened U.S. econ­omy and send major rip­ple effects across the globe.

Even by the recent stan­dards of divided gov­ern­ment, Boehner’s deci­sion trig­gered an extra­or­di­nary evening as first the Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­dent and then the Repub­li­can speaker maneu­vered for polit­i­cal posi­tion on an issue of enor­mous national import.

Unspo­ken, yet unmis­tak­able in all the brinkman­ship was the 2012 elec­tion cam­paign, still 18 months away, with the White House and both houses of Con­gress at stake.

In a let­ter cir­cu­lated ear­lier to the House Repub­li­can rank and file, Boehner said he had with­drawn from the talks because the pres­i­dent wanted to raise taxes and was reluc­tant to agree to cuts in ben­e­fit programs.

The dis­con­nect was “not because of dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties but because of dif­fer­ent visions for our coun­try,” he said, and he announced he would now seek agree­ment with the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Obama was hav­ing none of that, announc­ing instead a morn­ing White House meet­ing where he said he expected to hear pro­posed solu­tions from the top lead­ers of both par­ties in both houses.

“One of the ques­tions the Repub­li­can Party is going to have to ask itself is, ‘Can they say yes to any­thing?’” Obama said.

The pres­i­dent avoided direct crit­i­cism of Boehner, although he did men­tion that his phone calls to the speaker had gone unre­turned dur­ing the day. One admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial said the pres­i­dent had tried to reach Boehner four times. Asked about the spurned calls, Boehner said he didn’t think his rela­tion­ship with Obama had been “irrepara­bly damaged.”

He said he would attend the Sat­ur­day meet­ing at the White House.

Pri­vate, sometimes-secret nego­ti­a­tions had veered uncer­tainly for weeks, gen­er­at­ing reports as late as Thurs­day that the two sides were pos­si­bly clos­ing in on an agree­ment to cut $3 tril­lion in spend­ing and add as much as $1 tril­lion in pos­si­ble rev­enue while increas­ing the government’s bor­row­ing author­ity of $2.4 trillion.

That trig­gered a revolt among Democ­rats who expressed fears the pres­i­dent was giv­ing away too much in terms of cuts to Medicare and Social Secu­rity while get­ting too lit­tle by way of addi­tional revenues

“Fail­ing to raise the debt ceil­ing would do irrepara­ble harm to our credit stand­ing, would under­mine our abil­ity to lead on global eco­nomic issues and would dam­age our econ­omy,” for­mer Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Henry Paul­son, a Repub­li­can, told reporters dur­ing the day.

Cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials and Fed­eral reserve Chair­man Ben Bernanke have said much the same thing for weeks — while grid­lock per­sisted in Congress.

Obama said his only require­ment for an agree­ment was leg­is­la­tion that pro­vides the Trea­sury enough bor­row­ing author­ity to tide the gov­ern­ment over through the 2012 election.

Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., agreed in a writ­ten state­ment, say­ing a shorter-term exten­sion was unacceptable.

His coun­ter­part, Sen­ate Repub­li­can Leader Mitch McConnell sup­ported Boehner for “insist­ing on reduc­ing spend­ing and oppos­ing the president’s call for higher taxes on Amer­i­can fam­i­lies and job creators.”

Not for the first time, he said, “it’s time now for the debate to move out of a room in the White House and onto the House and Sen­ate floors.”

The two Sen­ate lead­ers will be among the law­mak­ers at the White House meet­ing called by the pres­i­dent, pre­sum­ably joined by Boehner and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Demo­c­ra­tic leader.

At the same time Obama and Boehner sought to define the clash to their polit­i­cal advan­tage, their aides pro­vided details of the talks that had ended with­out an agreement.

Repub­li­can aides said the White House had demanded addi­tional tax increases dur­ing the week, in the wake of a pro­posal by the bipar­ti­san “Gang of Six” in the Sen­ate, who called for an over­haul of the tax code that would increase rev­enue by $1 tril­lion over a decade.

Addi­tion­ally, the aides said the two sides were not able to bridge their dif­fer­ences over the trig­gers designed to force Con­gress to enact both tax reform and cuts to Medicare and other ben­e­fit pro­grams by early next year.

Posted by AP News on Jul 22 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.