The White House was eerily quiet Sunday afternoon and evening as Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill continued to hash out their differences and now we know why.
After all the sound and fury over a Democratic goal of adding $1.2 trillion in new revenues last week, Democrats appear to have capitulated completely on that score.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s working proposal focusing on $2.7 trillion in cuts that would go through the 2012 elections is silent on revenues. And last night, the White House statement reacting to the state-of-play only objected to GOP efforts to providing a short-term fix and punting the issue of further cuts to a bipartisan commission next year.
As it stands right now, Republicans seem to have scored a major coup, and the White House may be second-guessing itself for trying to up the ante last week from $800 billion in revenue raisers to $1.2 trillion after the Senate group known as the Gang of Six put out its plan.
But the White House wasn’t completely sidelined yesterday. Republican aides are giving President Obama credit for sinking a deal last night hammered out between the House GOP and Democratic leaders that would have provided for a short-term extension of the debt limit in order to avoid default. Congressional Democrats, however, are denying that the Obama was the one to nix the agreement during an hour-long meeting at the White House Sunday evening.
Such a deal would look very similar to what Republicans are now pushing — a short-term extension of the debt limit and that would extend only until next year when a special bipartisan commission would try to find more costs savings and wrangle with the more nettlesome issues such as cuts to entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
Meanwhile, the initial Republican response seems wary. Rather than rejoicing that the Democrats appear to have accepted many of the key GOP demands, Speaker John Boehner tweeted: “POTUS wants a $2.4T blank check to get him through the next election, w/out cuts that exceed the hike. This is indefensible.”
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