Boehner: No Deal at WH Meeting

Politico reports:

Speaker of the House John Boehner said there was no deal reached on the budget in a meeting Tuesday with the White House.

“The Speaker told the president that the House will not be put in a box and forced to choose between two options that are bad for the country (accepting a bad deal that fails to make real spending cuts, or accepting a government shutdown due to Senate inaction), ” according to the release from Boehner’s office.

The current spending bill expires Friday, raising the stakes for a deal, or face a shutdown.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor already accused the White House Tuesday of setting up a shutdown by rejecting a short-term deal that would slash $12 billion and keep the government running for another week.

“The White House has indicated now that they are already rejecting that notion,” Cantor said of the proposal, “raising the risk for a government shutdown.”

The Appropriations Committee released a bill that would fund the government for a week, but cuts $12 billion and keeps the Defense Department funded.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday that the president would prefer a long-term deal, rather than a week-by-week “toll booth” approach to the budget.

“It is counterproductive, we think, to assume that we have to negotiate a short-term CR when we have an agreement on the table that can be reached for the full fiscal year,” Carney said.

Cantor, who controls the House schedule, said a decision hasn’t been reached whether to let the bill even get a vote on the House floor.