House Speaker John Boehner fired a warning shot Thursday over September’s looming debt ceiling deadline battle, calling on the president to “reconsider his reckless threat to shut down the government.”
During the his weekly speaker’s press conference, the Ohio Republican referred to a letter he sent to the White House reminding President Barack Obama about his March 1 agreement with Boehner to treat funding the government and deficit reduction as separate issues.
“The White House said the president will not sign any spending bill unless we agree to his demands for a broader budget deal. In short, the president said higher taxes and higher spending, or we’re going to shut down the government,” Boehner said.
Boehner went on to say he would not disarm the debt ceiling threat, which may prove necessary in negotiations set to take place in the fall. But Boehner added that he does not expect it will be necessary.
“I know some are trying to get me to take this off the table entirely. As I frankly told Sen. [Mitch] McConnell, I’m 99.99 percent sure that that’s not likely to happen. But you never know,” Boehner said.
The White House has threatened to veto the last two budget bills drafted by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin from the House Budget Committee aimed at dramatically reducing spending and balancing the federal budget over 10 years.
Both passed with large Republican majority support but were dead on arrival in the Senate, where the Democratic managed to pass its own budget plan earlier this year – Senate’s the first in four years.
During the debt ceiling battle of 2011 Boehner took raising taxes off the negotiating table with the White House. The “fiscal cliff” battle in 2012 ended after the House approved a tax hike on wealthy Americans – much to the chagrin of more than 80 Tea Party freshman, who blamed Boehner for the bad deal.
With sequestration in effect and a caucus of rebel Tea Party Republicans, many of whom would like to see a new speaker, Boehner is unlikely to acquiesce to White House demands this time around.
“There’s no one who wants to make progress on the deficits more than I do,” Boehner said, “That’s why the idea of shutting down the government if we can’t find a deal is so irresponsible. And the truth is that we have a consequence for failing to find further deficit reduction – it’s called sequestration.”
As a result of sequestration and higher tax revenues, the U.S. will hit the debt ceiling later in the year than previously expected, pushing the likely debate and vote until after the August session break.