WASHINGTON — Cost estimates for a key portion of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law have ballooned by $111 billion from last year’s budget, and a senior Republican lawmaker on Friday demanded an explanation.
WASHINGTON — Failure to raise the U.S. debt limit would probably ensure President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell warned fellow conservatives on Wednesday, fresh evidence of deep GOP political divisions on an issue of paramount importance to the nation and its economy.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans pulled out of debt-reduction talks led by Vice President Joe Biden with a flourish on Thursday, blaming Democrats for demanding tax increases as part of a deal rather than accepting more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicare and other government programs.
WASHINGTON — The threat of a first-ever default by the federal government is pushing President Barack Obama and Republicans toward a sweeping agreement to cut government spending and increase the Treasury’s borrowing authority. Yet a perennial partisan struggle over the Medicare program for seniors’ health care drives them apart.
Facing a dire warning from a credit rating agency, the Obama administration lobbied some of Congress’ most conservative members Thursday for an increase in the nation’s debt limit. Republicans responded that the surest way to reassure financial markets was to enact deep deficit cuts.
Face to face at the White House, GOP leaders complained to President Barack Obama on Wednesday that he had not produced a detailed plan of spending cuts and accused him of playing politics over Medicare as the nation careens toward a debt crisis.
House Republicans dealt defeat to their own proposal for a $2.4 trillion increase in the nation’s debt limit Tuesday, a political gambit designed to reinforce a demand for spending cuts to accompany any increase in government borrowing.