White House Talks With Republicans, Obama Make No Progress
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Rep. Paul Ryan
GOP leaders called on Obama to cut government spending in exchange for raising the national debt ceiling. Republicans continued to pressure the president's administration, citing an August 2 deadline the increase the federal debt limit.
From The Washington Post:
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said he told Obama, “This is the moment. This is the window of opportunity where we can deal with this on our terms. . . . Let’s not kick the can down the road one more time. Now is the time to deal with it.”
“If we’re going to raise the debt limit, the spending cuts should exceed the increase in the debt limit, otherwise it will serve to cost us jobs in our country,” Boehner said to reporters afterward. “It’s not what the American people want.”
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), whose budget plan has been widely criticized by Democrats because it would drastically overhaul Medicare, complained that the plan “has been misdescribed by the president and many others.”
Ryan, the House Budget Committee Chairman, in particular took issue with Obama's stance on the debt limit, saying that it was a sign that Obama was thinking about his 2012 campaign.
The Los Angeles Times reported:
Later, speaking to reporters, Ryan was asked if he had told Obama that he hadn't shown leadership on budget issues.
"That's not exactly what I said," he responded. "I said we've got to take on this debt and if we demagogue each other at the leadership level, then we're never going to take on our debt."
Ryan went on to say that Obama has "mischaracterized" his Medicare plan when talking publicly about it. So he said he explained to Obama how the plan works, in the hopes that "in the future he won't mischaracterize it."
"I simply explained what our plan is, how it works," Ryan said, standing before a bank of cameras outside the White House. "It's been misdescribed by the president and many others. So we simply described to him what it is we’ve been proposing so that he hears from us how our proposal works."
Despite the Republican's pressure, Obama made it clear that failing to raise the national debt limit would have dire consequences for the nation.
"The president made clear that he believes there is no margin here for in any way casting doubt on the possibility that the debt ceiling would be raised, that the effect of even suggesting that it won't happen could be highly negative and could have dire consequences for our economy and the global economy," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday.
The national deficit is expected to reach $1.4 trillion this year.
