Less than two hours after President Barack Obama turned up political
pressure on Republicans to reopen the government and raise the debt
ceiling, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the president was
looking for “unconditional surrender.”
“The president said today if there’s unconditional surrender by
Republicans, he’ll sit down and talk to us,” Boehner said Tuesday.
“That’s not the way our government works.”
The Ohio Republican addressed reporters just outside his office to
rebut Obama’s earlier press conference. His message to the president was
clear: The ongoing government shutdown and pending debt ceiling
deadline would not be resolved without negotiations.
“It’s time to have that conversation,” Boehner said. “Not next week,
not next month — the conversation needs to begin today. The long and
short of it is, there’s going to be a negotiation.”
Boehner ducked a question on what would happen if Congress found
itself in the final minutes before a debt ceiling breach without an
agreement, reiterating the need to talk.
Obama placed a call to Boehner earlier in the day, to reaffirm his
position that Republicans should pass ‘clean’ bills, with no strings
attached, to end the government shutdown and to increase the debt
ceiling. Boehner said it was a “pleasant” conversation, but he was left
“disappointed.”
House Republicans unveiled a new strategy Tuesday to deal with both
the shutdown and the looming debt ceiling crisis: a bipartisan
negotiating team, resembling 2011′s supercommittee, that would hash out a
deal to solve both issues. Senate Democrats showed little interest in
the idea, and plan to bring a clean bill to the floor this week that
would extend the debt limit through the end of 2014.
“All we™re asking for is to sit down and have a conversation,”
Boehner said. “There™s no reason to make it more difficult to bring
people to the table. There™s no boundaries here. There™s nothing on the
table, there™s nothing off the table. I™m trying to do everything I can
to bring people together and have a conversation.”
Both Obama and Democrats said they would be willing to have that
conversation, but only after Republicans reopen the government and raise
the debt ceiling. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the House Budget
Committee’s top Democrat, also pointed out that Republicans did not
include tax reform in the so-called negotiating team’s points of
discussion, making the prospects of a deficit-reduction deal unlikely.
If no breakthrough is made in the next week, Congress will move
dangerously close to the Oct. 17 deadline for the government to breach
the current debt limit. Economists have warned the consequences of
default may include sending stock and bond markets into nosedives and
tipping off another recession.
Boehner said he agreed with the president that the consequences of default would be severe.
“I didn’t come here to shut down the government,” Boehner said. “And I
certainly didn’t come here to default on our debt.” The Huffington Post
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