Boehner: Won't Promise to Hold Debt Vote

Politico reports:

Speaker John Boehner won’t guarantee a vote on raising the debt limit, the latest threat in an increasingly high stakes game of chicken with the White House over whether Congress will inch closer to letting the nation default on its credit.

Boehner, in an interview with POLITICO here Monday, also demanded that President Barack Obama give in to Republican demands to slash spending and dramatically change “the way we spend the people’s money.”

“If the president doesn’t get serious about the need to address our fiscal nightmare, yeah, there’s a chance it [the debt limit vote] could not happen,” Boehner told POLITICO after he toured a manufacturing company in this western Ohio town. “But that’s not my goal.”

The vote to increase the borrowing ceiling beyond the current limit of $14 trillion has become one of the defining issues for a House Republican majority that ran campaigns promising dramatic cuts in government spending. As the deadline draws closer to a debt ceiling vote, Republicans are starting to sound less compromising in their stance, even as Treasury officials warn of market calamity and economic “Armageddon” if Congress refuses a vote.

Boehner laid out several goals for any potential deal on the debt limit: He is calling for controls on discretionary spending and altering the nation’s entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid to be attached to the legislation to hike the debt ceiling.

He was noncommittal about holding a vote on that bill before July 4 — very close to the deadline by which Treasury says the U.S. will have hit its borrowing limit.

Boehner’s comments are his strongest to date in the debate over the debt limit – a stark contrast to his tight-lipped demeanor when he negotiated with Obama earlier this month over the budget deal that kept the government open while cutting $38 billion in spending.

The two-week congressional spring break is proving to be a pivotal time during the first few months of Boehner's speakership. He’s coming off a largely successful budget negotiation but he is under enormous pressure from the right not to offer any concessions on the debt limit — despite warnings from economists and Treasury experts that failure to raise the limit will shake global markets.

But while Boehner talks tough on the debt limit, some politically vulnerable Republicans are facing serious heat in town halls during the spring recess for their "yes" votes on Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) 2012 budget, which would dramatically overhaul Medicare and Medicaid.

But Boehner is injecting those politically difficult programs back into the debate in advance of the debt limit vote, saying that “I think it’s time to deal with entitlement programs…on the debt ceiling.”

Tax increases, he has said, are a nonstarter.