JEWEL SAMAD / AFP / Getty Images
JEWEL SAMAD / AFP / Getty Images
Congress

Notes of Optimism in Weekend Wrangling, but No Debt Deal Yet

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A day after talks between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner abruptly collapsed, congressional leaders worked overtime on Saturday to craft a deal that can raise the $14.3 trillion federal debt limit and staves off a looming market panic.

After an evening of high drama in sweltering Washington, Obama summoned Boehner and three other top congressional leaders — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, as well as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — to an 11 a.m. meeting at the White House. The participants, whose “strained body language suggested a school principal’s office,” according to a pool reporter ushered in for a glimpse, lasted for 50 minutes and ended without an agreement. The congressional bosses, minus Obama, met again in a conference room in the Speaker’s offices at the Capitol in the late afternoon.

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Congress 2 days ago

The Inside Story of Obama and Boehner’s Second Failed Grand Bargain

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Alex Wong / Getty

Late last Sunday morning, House Speaker John Boehner and his No. 2, majority leader Eric Cantor, found themselves in White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley’s West Wing office talking with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner about how tax reform, if done right, could produce $800 billion in new revenues over the next 10 years through growth and by closing loopholes. Sensitive to an anti-tax promise taken by most of the House Republicans, the negotiators felt this would be a way to raise revenues without breaking the pledge. Cantor wasn’t sure such a deal could pass the House, but Boehner had long believed tax reform would be essential to any grand bargain. Morning turned to afternoon and the meeting ended in the Oval Office with President Obama. The proposed deal would come with nearly $1.7 trillion in spending cuts, including significant concessions from Democrats on entitlements such as raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 and other cuts to benefits. Both Cantor and Boehner left hopeful that a larger-than-anticipated deal on deficit reduction might be within their reach. It was the closest the two sides would come to a grand bargain to stem the tide of federal red ink and raise the borrowing limit.

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Aviation 1 day ago

FAA Standoff Escalates: You Highlight Our Pork, We’ll Highlight Yours

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It’s not the most important example of bipartisan gridlock these days, but the legislation funding the Federal Aviation Administration expired Friday at midnight after House and Senate leaders failed to reach agreement on a routine extension. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that nearly 4,000 FAA employees will be furloughed, and the agency would shut down its Airport Improvement Program.

The dispute involves a long-term FAA bill to which House Republicans have been trying to attach language that would make it harder for airline and railroad employees to unionize. Senate Democrats resisted the language, so House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica sent the Senate an otherwise clean extension that striped some silly subsidies for little-used rural airports that just happened to be located in the states of three key Democratic senators.

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  • Poll Data

    New Hampshire GOP voters' preferences for 2012:

    Source: CNN
Viewpoint 2 days ago

Two Compromises

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Another awful week for the Republic–and some interesting decisions by the President. He chose to compromise in his deficit reduction negotiations with the Republicans…and got nowhere. He chose to compromise by not appointing Elizabeth Warren the director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau…and got nowhere.

You’re expecting me to rail against compromising with Republicans, right? Wrong.

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Photos 2 days ago

Political Pictures of the Week

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Jim Urquhart / AP

TIME’s photo editors bring you the best photos of the past week, from the Beltway and beyond.

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Barack Obama 2 days ago

As Debt Talks Collapse, Obama and Boehner Take Grievances Public

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Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty Images

Updated 9:54 p.m. Friday

A clearly agitated President Obama walked out in front of cameras Friday evening to announce that 11th hour talks with Speaker John Boehner and House Republicans to raise the federal borrowing limit and cut the deficit had collapsed. “What this came down to was there doesn’t seem to be a capacity for them to say yes,” Obama said.

Roughly an hour later, Speaker Boehner appeared before reporters on Capital Hill to say talks had broken down because President Obama had “moved the goal posts,” during the final hours of the negotiation, and that Boehner would now continue negotiations with House and Senate leaders. The final sticking point between the two men is a dispute over $400 billion in tax increases over 10 years, or less than 1% of the total federal budget during that time. Boehner and Obama had already agreed to $800 billion in revenue increases and several times as much in spending cuts, including cuts in entitlements. “It’s the president that walked away from his agreement,” Boehner said. Obama denied any backtracking in negotiations.

Despite the breakdown in talks, Boehner said he would meet with the President at the White House Saturday morning to continue negotiations. “I do trust him as a negotiator,” Boehner said of Obama. Both men said they are confident that the debt ceiling can be lifted in time to prevent an unsettling of financial markets and a spike in interest rates. But the prospects of an overall deficit reduction deal, which markets are also looking for, remains in doubt.

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Verbatim 2 days ago

Obama on DADT

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"I have certified and notified Congress that the requirements for repeal have been met. ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ will end, once and for all, in 60 days."

–President Obama in a statement on official certification of the measure rolling back the ban on gays serving openly in the military.

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Congress 2 days ago

House Democrats Weigh Sacrifice and Await Word in Debt Talks

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For the past seven months, House Democrats have had a rough gig. Relegated to the minority by the Tea Party wave, they were forced to watch helplessly as the new House Majority passed reams of go-nowhere conservative legislation in party line votes and  have been excluded from key private talks between President Obama and their Republican counterparts. And next week, when the House is expected to take up the inchoate deficit-reduction bill Obama and House Republicans are working to craft, Democrats will be thrust back into an unpleasant role.

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Jon Huntsman 2 days ago

Who’s Changed More: Romney or Huntsman?

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A day after changing campaign managers, Jon Huntsman’s team takes a new shot at Mitt Romney’s: A Huntsman spokesman notes that, as a candidate for Massachusetts governor in 2002, Romney disdained Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge as “government by gimmickry,” but has happily signed it this time around. “So, what’s changed?,” asks Huntsman’s campaign.

Some people are asking the same question of Huntsman.

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Religion 2 days ago

Articles of Faith: Republicans Court Social Conservatives — and Controversy

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With three weeks to go until the Ames straw poll in Iowa, the race is on to capture the hearts of social conservatives in the Republican party. A number of candidates are competing for the important voting bloc, but for all practical purposes, the field has already narrowed to Michele Bachmann and a still-undeclared candidate, Rick Perry.

Both politicians can legitimately claim to speak not only to the Christian Right, but from it as well. Both are already scheduled to speak this September at Liberty University, the school founded by the late Jerry Falwell. Bachmann, who earned her law degree at Oral Roberts University, is a darling of social conservatives for her unabashed opposition of everything from national service to gay rights, and for her background as a foster parent to 23 children. For his part, Perry is Bush 2.0, a Texas true believer who is hosting a national prayer gathering on Aug. 6. The event, he recently explained on Family Research Council president Tony Perkins’ radio show, is for “people who are Christ-lovin’ and realize our country has gotten off track.”

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