Obama: 'No Excuse' for Not Reaching Budget Deal
The New York Times reports:
At an impromptu news conference at the White House, President Obama said there was “no excuse” for failing to pass a budget for the rest of this year, and that he was no longer willing to accept one short-term deal after another to temporarily keep agencies running.
“I can’t have my agencies making plans on two-week budgets,” he said. “What we are not going to do is once again put off something that should have gotten done months ago.”
Republicans made clear they had no intention of backing down on more cuts in current year spending and would frame the fight over next year’s budget in similar terms. Their long-term proposal also included changes in mandatory entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which they derided as “autopilot” programs.
As the news circulated that a White House meeting had produced no deal between Speaker John A. Boehner and President Obama, Senator Charles Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said that if a shutdown was in the offing, the blame should lie at the feet of Republicans.
“A deal with $33 billion in spending cuts is right there for the taking,” Mr. Schumer said in an e-mail. “But the House leadership will need to stand up to the Tea Party.” Democrats also denounced the Republicans’ long-term proposal.
House Republicans unveiled the plan on Tuesday in a move calculated in part to draw support from their Tea Party wing by offering steep cuts in taxes and spending in future years, and a far-reaching budget proposal for next year and beyond that cuts $5.8 trillion from anticipated spending levels over 10 years.
The plan, drafted principally by Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the Budget Committee, proposes not only to limit federal spending and reconfigure major federal health programs, but also to rewrite the tax code, cutting the top tax rate for both individuals and corporations to 25 percent from 35 percent, reducing the number of income tax brackets and eliminating what it calls a “burdensome tangle of loopholes.”
At a news conference Tuesday on Capitol Hill, Mr. Ryan, surrounded by his fellow Republicans from the budget committee, alluded to the power of the large freshman class and its Tea Party contingent who have helped to propel the fiscal fight forward. “The new people did not come here for a political career,” he said. “They came here for a cause. This isn’t a budget. This a cause.”
In a news release issued shortly after the talks at the White House, Mr. Boehner said that no agreement had been reached, and that House Republicans remained open to extending the existing stopgap spending measure, which expires Friday, with another continuing resolution that would last one week and cut an additional $12 billion. (The proposal also includes language to bar federal and local financing for abortion services in Washington, D.C.)
Mr. Boehner added that “Republicans’ strong preference is that we instead pass a bipartisan agreement this week that resolves last year’s budget mess by making real spending cuts and keeps the entire government running through September.”
Mr. Obama said he would call the leaders back on Wednesday and Thursday for further talks, if necessary.
“We can’t have a my way or the highway approach to the problem,” he said.
The administration accelerated preparations for a potential shutdown, asking agency heads to show their contingency plans to senior managers, according to a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget.
