WASHINGTON (AP) — Racing the debt clock, Congress is working on dual tracks while President Barack Obama appeals to the public in hopes of influencing a deal that talks have failed to produce so far.
"We have to ask everyone to play their part
because we are all part of the same country," Obama said Saturday, pushing
a combination of spending cuts and tax increases that has met stiff resistance
from Republicans. "We are all in this together."
In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama
said the wealthiest must "pay their fair share." He invoked budget
deals negotiated by GOP President Ronald Reagan and Democratic House Speaker
Tip O'Neill — which included a payroll tax increase — and Democratic President
Bill Clinton and Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich.
"You sent us to Washington to do the tough
things, the right things," he said. "Not just for some of us, but for
all of us."
As a critical Aug. 2 deadline approached, the
chances that Obama would get $4 trillion or even $2 trillion in deficit
reduction on terms he preferred were quickly fading as Congress moved to take
control of the debate. At a news conference Friday, Obama opened the door to a
smaller package of deficit reductions without revenue increases.
Obama's communications director, Dan Pfeiffer, said
Saturday the president, Vice President Joe Biden and White House aides were
discussing "various options" with congressional leaders and House and
Senate aides from both parties.
The White House held out the possibility of
arranging a meeting with the leaders on Sunday.
House Republicans prepared to vote this coming week
on allowing an increase in the government's borrowing limit through 2012 as
long as Congress approved a balanced-budget constitutional amendment, which is
highly unlikely.
In the Senate, the Republican and Democratic
leaders worked on a bipartisan plan that would allow Obama to raise the debt
limit without a prior vote by lawmakers. The talks focused on how to address
long-term deficit reduction in the proposal in hopes of satisfying House
Republicans.
A weekend deadline that the president gave
congressional leaders to choose one of three deficit reduction options became a
moot point after House and Senate leaders made it clear to the White House on
Friday that they were moving ahead with their own plans.
In the Republicans' address Saturday, Sen. Orrin
Hatch of Utah argued for passage of a balanced-budget amendment. He blamed
Democrats for failing to embrace adequate budget cuts and said "the solution
to a spending crisis is not tax increases."
An amendment that requires a balanced budget, he
said, "would put us on a path to fiscal health and would prevent this
White House or any future White House from forcing more debt on the American
people."
The government said Friday it was using its last
stopgap measure to avoid exceeding the current $14.3 trillion debt limit.
Administration officials, economists and the financial markets have warned that
missing the Aug. 2 deadline and precipitating a government default would send
convulsions through an already weakened economy.
Obama had held five straight days of meeting with
congressional leaders at the White House, but none of the three options he
proposed — deficit cuts of $4 trillion, $2 trillion or $1.5 trillion over 10
years — were unlocking enough support to increase the debt ceiling by the $2.4
trillion Obama wants to make it last beyond the 2012 elections.
Essentially declaring those discussions over,
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Friday: "''Now the debate
will move from a room in the White House to the House and Senate floors."
By day's end, House Speaker John Boehner held at least two top-level meetings,
one with White House Chief of Sta ff Bill Daley and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner,
and the other with House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.
In search of a deal, Obama has used a combination
of private meetings with congressional leaders and high visibility press
conferences, radio addresses and public statements in an effort to win the
public to his side. His pitch is also aimed at independent voters, to whom he
is presenting himself as a willing compromiser.
In a White House video distributed Saturday by
Obama senior adviser David Plouffe to supporters, Obama is shown praising the
virtue of compromise to a group of Democratic, Republican and independent
students. He noted that President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
permitted slavery in border states loyal to the Union, in an attempt to hold
the nation together.
"Here you've got a wartime president whose
making a compromise around probably the greatest moral issue that the country
ever faced because he understood that 'right now, my job is to win the war and
to maintain the union,'" Obama said.
"Can you imagine how the (liberal news outlet)
Huffington Post would have reported on that? It would have been blistering.
Think about it, 'Lincoln sells out slaves.'"
He told the students: "The nature of our
democracy and the nature of our politics is to marry principle to a political
process that means you don't get 100 percent of what you want."
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
(AP
Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
