Obama Suspends White House Debt Talks

The New York Times reports:

President Obama threw the deadlocked budget negotiations back to Congress on Thursday, telling Republicans and Democrats to try to work out an agreement to avert a government default, and suggesting that more ambitious efforts to cut the deficit had hit a wall.

After a polite but inconclusive session that covered familiar ground and made no headway, Mr. Obama told the Congressional leaders to confer with their rank-and-file members over the next 24 to 36 hours to “figure out what can get done,” said a Democratic official briefed on the negotiations.

The president said he might summon the leaders to the White House over the weekend if there was no progress; he has scheduled a news conference for Friday morning to argue his case publicly. On Capitol Hill, leaders of both parties were focused increasingly on a proposal by the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, that could provide a way out of the stalemate on the debt limit.