“We are working, and I’m confident there will be resolution,” Mr. Boehner told fellow House Republicans on an afternoon conference call, according to participants. “There has to be.”
Yet an hourlong Saturday meeting in Mr. Boehner’s Capitol suite was followed by pessimistic assessments of the state of negotiations from the two top Congressional Democrats, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader. They accused Republicans of refusing to give ground on how the federal debt limit would be raised.
“Their unwillingness to compromise is pushing us to the brink of a default on the full faith and credit of the United States,” Mr. Reid said of Mr. Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who also attended the session. “We have run out of time for politics. Now is the time for cooperation.”
The impasse over major elements of the agreement came even as lawmakers said they were determined to make a new compromise public on Sunday afternoon before the opening of financial markets in Asia to reassure investors there.
President Obama began a morning meeting with Congressional leaders at the White House by noting that global markets could react adversely to Friday’s collapse of his and Mr. Boehner’s negotiations as early as Sunday, before trading begins in Asia. His Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, reinforced the point at the meeting’s end.
The tense series of high-powered meetings on Saturday was reflective of the sense of urgency among lawmakers with little more than a week before the federal government risks defaulting on its debts, a fate that could be avoided if Congress agrees to increase the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. Congressional Republicans, Democrats and Mr. Obama have seized on the debt fight as a way to win approval of a debt-reduction package but have disagreed sharply over what it should include.
The speaker, who abruptly broke off budget talks with Mr. Obama on Friday evening, said that he hoped the plan could be finished within 24 hours and indicated on the conference call with House members that the savings would most likely be achieved in two stages. As described by knowledgeable Congressional aides, the agreement under discussion would enact a first round of cuts of just under $1 trillion, an amount they said was sufficient to clear the way for a debt limit increase through 2011. A second increase would follow after a newly created legislative commission considered a broader range of spending cuts, program overhauls and potential revenue increases.
Democrats, who have dug in against anything they see as a short-term extension that would require multiple votes on the debt increase before the end of next year, said they accepted the two-stage plan but wanted the full increase in the debt limit now.
“I will not support any short-term agreement, and neither will President Obama nor Leader Pelosi,” Mr. Reid said in a written statement earlier on Saturday. “We seek an extension of the debt ceiling through at least the end of 2012. We will not send a message of uncertainty to the world.”
Following Mr. Reid’s criticism, Republican officials said they have for months stuck to a consistent position demanding that each dollar increase in the debt ceiling be offset with a dollar in savings. They did not appear ready to abandon that position, with a spokesman for Mr. Boehner saying a two-step process was “inevitable.”
Still, the spokesman, Michael Steel, said that “we continue to believe that defaulting on the full faith and credit of the United States is not an option.” An aide to Mr. McConnell said the negotiations aimed at preventing a default would continue.
Mr. Reid and the other leaders met at the White House on Saturday morning at the request of Mr. Obama. The meeting broke up without resolution just before noon, after about an hour of discussion.
In a statement after the White House session, Mr. McConnell indicated that he and his leadership counterparts were intent on devising a fallback measure to assure the borrowing ceiling was raised in time.
“The president wanted to know that there was a plan for preventing national default. The bipartisan leadership in Congress is committed to working on new legislation that will prevent default while substantially reducing Washington spending,” Mr. McConnell said.
The White House, in its own statement, said that Mr. Obama reiterated his opposition to a short-term extension of the ceiling because it would hurt the economy, prompt rating agencies to downgrade the nation’s credit rating and drive up interest rates for all Americans.
“As the current situation makes clear, it would be irresponsible to put our country and economy at risk again in just a few short months with another battle over raising the debt ceiling,” the White House statement said.
The rancorous ending to the debt discussions on Friday means that leaders of the House and Senate now have only days to find a debt limit solution that has eluded them for months, gaming out ways to get a debt increase through a Republican-controlled House packed with conservatives demanding deep cuts and no new revenues.
Republicans were taking pains to show that the new plan was different from an earlier proposal by Mr. McConnell that would allow Congress to clear a debt increase through a procedural maneuver.
Under that approach, Congress could vote to disapprove the debt increase but allow Mr. Obama to veto the plan and get a rise in the ceiling if the House or Senate failed to override the veto, a very likely outcome. Aides said, however, that the developing proposal was likely to be modeled in some part on the McConnell approach, which had run into resistance in the House and from conservative activists.
In weeks of negotiations, House and Senate members have identified more than $1 trillion in savings that they could agree on, including cuts in federal agency budgets, farm subsidies, federal pension benefits and Medicaid.
If the new talks collapse, House Republicans could ultimately devise an extension based on cuts they identify and send it to the Senate, daring lawmakers to reject it or the president to veto it.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=86f5fe73f35e487258d211d8baeb101e
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.