The President's proposal establishes a new front in the rhetorical battle to frame the deficit debate
Back in May, when Democrats and Republicans in Congress were in the early stages of jockeying for position in the impending debt debacle, John Boehner went to the Economic Club of New York to deliver an ultimatum. The federal debt ceiling wouldn’t be raised, he said, unless the spending cuts in the deal exceeded the [...]
After days of hype in Washington, House Speaker John Boehner threw cold water on the prospect of a grand bargain on deficit reduction Saturday night, effectively scaling back negotiations on a deal tied to the effort to raise the debt ceiling before an Aug. 2 deadline. “Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not [...]
The protagonists in the debt-limit dealing are obviously President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, the golfing buddies and party leaders. The Senate’s 60-vote threshold for legislation—and the potential for random windbags to block a deal and crash the global economy—means that Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell get attention as well. [...]
There are really only two men in Washington who have any idea of what’s going on with the race to reach a bipartisan deal on deficit reduction and they’re not talking much. On Thursday, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner gathered with leaders from both parties in Congress to discuss what a debt ceiling [...]
When President Obama meets at the White House on Thursday morning with Democratic and Republican leaders from Congress, all of Washington will be watching carefully for any hint of progress toward a deficit-reduction deal that can pave the way for a politically painful Congressional vote to raise the federal debt limit. But one group will [...]
Senator Tom Coburn on Tuesday said that he’s “taking a break” from the Gang of Six, the Senate group that has been trying for months to reach a bipartisan deal on deficit reduction. The Oklahoma Republican’s withdrawal likely dashes any hopes that the three Democrats — North Dakota’s Kent Conrad, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Virginia’s [...]
Here’s what we learned today: Whatever action Congress takes on the debt ceiling and deficit reduction will be the last significant work Washington does before all pretenses are abandoned and campaigning for 2012 begins in earnest. In the next four to six weeks, Congress must pass a measure raising the debt ceiling as the Treasury Department [...]
