Obama’s meeting with Republicans came a day after a similar tete-a-tete with Senate Democrats and hours before a bipartisan group of lawmakers met for a third time with Biden in hopes of cutting a debt-limit deal. The national debt is set to hit the current $14.3 trillion ceiling within the next few days. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has said he can keep paying the bills without a higher limit through Aug. 2, when the United States would run the risk of default.
Lawmakers in both parties say they are willing to raise the limit, but only in exchange for a plan to reduce future borrowing. The budget blueprint Obama sent to Capitol Hill in February would have required $9.5 trillion in fresh debt through 2021, and even the more austere House GOP budget would require nearly $2 trillion in new borrowing through the end of next year.
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Answering a question on deficit and debt reduction at a town hall on the economy, President Obama reiterated a line he's used frequently, saying the deficit must be reduced "using a scalpel and not a machete."
McConnell declined to say whether Republicans are willing to vote for a $2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling in one shot or prefer to vote multiple times for smaller increases. “How much and how long” is part of the negotiations, he said.
McConnell did not echo Boehner’s demand that the value of spending cuts exceed the value of the debt limit increase. But McConnell endorsed the Biden talks as the forum for achieving bipartisan compromise and said that “we will be recommending it to our members” if such an agreement is reached.
McConnell and other Republicans described their 75-minute meeting with Obama as “productive,” with several urging the president to tell Democrats to stop bashing the House GOP Medicare plan, which polls show to be deeply unpopular.
Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.) said he told Obama: “Whenever we demagogue, all we do is push each other away from solving a problem we all know needs to be solved.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) said he told Obama about his 80-year-old mother, a longtime Medicare recipient. “I want us to save Medicare with no changes for current beneficiaries and to ensure it exists for my generation and for my children’s generation. But we have to start dealing with it now,” Rubio said.
White House press secretary Jay Carney described the meeting as “constructive.”
“Anytime you can get Democrats and Republicans together, in this case a Democratic president and Republican senators together, to talk about this issue,” he told reporters, “that’s a positive thing.”
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