Politics

Boehner: Obama wants ‘unconditional surrender’ from Republicans

Alexis Levinson Political Reporter
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WASHINGTON — Speaker of the House John Boehner said Tuesday afternoon that President Barack Obama was requesting “unconditional surrender” from Republicans in exchange for any kind of negotiations.

Tuesday morning, Boehner and Obama had a phone call, during which, according to a read out from the Speaker’s office: “The president called the speaker again today to reiterate that he won’t negotiate on a government funding bill or debt limit increase.” Later on Tuesday, Obama had a press conference in which he reiterated that message: there would be no negotiations until Republicans agreed to pass the spending bill passed by the Senate and the government was reopened.

“What the president said today was, if there’s unconditional surrender by Republicans, he’ll sit down and talk to us,” Boehner said at a press conference later in the day.

That, he said, was not an option.

“The only way this is going to happen is to in fact have a conversation. It’s time to have that conversation … the conversation ought to start today,” he said.

“The long and short of it is, there’s going to be a negotiation here,” Boehner said.

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