White House meeting ends with little progress

[Valin]

AP/Townhall:

7/10/11

The rare Sunday evening White House meeting between President Barack Obama and congressional leaders has ended with many plans but little progress on a debt and deficit reduction deal.

The participants made clear that they're not giving up on getting an agreement before an Aug. 2 deadline. Obama plans a news conference Monday, and the group of eight lawmakers plans to meet at the White House every day until a deal is struck, officials said.

During the 90-minute session Sunday, Obama pressed for the $4 trillion deal that congressional Republicans have rejected, arguing that a more modest approach would be equally hard to negotiate.
(Snip)

[Valin]

The Rose Garden collapse

By Jennifer Rubin

 

On Saturday afternoon a Capitol Hill source let it be known that “we’re hearing the White House is demanding major, unambiguous tax hikes. To get spending caps and entitlement tweaks, greater economic pain appears to be the White House’s asking price. It is increasingly likely that we aren’t going to see a ‘big’ deal if the White House doesn’t budge. [The]Speaker looks to be holding strong.”

 

And indeed, early Saturday night, Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) released a statement indicating: “Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes. I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase.” A senior House advisor told me that still left open the potential for a substantial deal with no tax hikes. “The White House says they’ll veto anything that doesn’t get us through 2012. And Boehner still says we’ve gotta cut more than we raise. So $2 trillion? $2.5?”

 

Don Stewart, deputy chief of staff for communications for Minority Leader Sen.Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) emailed me, “Like the Speaker, Sen. McConnell has consistently said that we should cut Washington spending without raising taxes on job creators, particularly in the middle of a jobs crisis. And he remains concerned with the Democrats’ unwillingness to take steps to protect entitlement programs from bankruptcy, but hopes the President will be able to use Sunday night’s meeting to encourage them to take action on needed reforms.”

 

(Snip)

[clearvision]

Who will blink, because someone has to...