With White House senior adviser David Plouffe and congressional Democrats warning about the risks of not raising the debt ceiling, Republicans countered on Sunday that there's no way that President Barack Obama would get a clean bill without other concessions. 
 
 
 
 “The president just can’t waltz in and say we’re going to have a debt crisis if we don’t raise the debt limit, Congress,” Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican of the Senate Budget Committee said on CBS’s “Face the Nation," “and we’re not going to have any changes and I’m not going to support any changes.” 
 
 
 
 “He’s going to have to meet Congress halfway - really the American people halfway,” Sessions said. 
 
 
 
 House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), fresh off the budget talks, told donors this weekend that if Obama wants an up or down vote on the debt ceiling he’s not going to get it. 
 
 
 
 “The president says I want you to send me a clean bill,” Boehner said. “Well guess what, Mr. President, not a chance you’re going to get a clean bill.” 
 
 
 
 “There will not be an increase in the debt limit without something really, really big attached to it,” he continued in a clip of his remarks at a fundraiser that was played during “Face the Nation.” 
 
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 permalink ||||| Cantor: Obama dragged to the table on spending 
 
 House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Sunday that White House senior adviser David Plouffe is not being honest when he says that President Barack Obama has been leading the discussion on cutting taxes and reducing the deficit. 
 
 “We’ve had to bring this president kicking and screaming to the table to cut spending,” Cantor said on "Fox News Sunday." “I then hear they’re going to present a plan as to how to address the fiscal situation…. In my opinion its really hard to believe what this president is saying.” 
 
 Cantor said that Obama is proposing violating the very tax agreement that was signed in December, which he supported, and is flip flopping on his previous opposition to raising the debt limit. 
 
 “Right away, they’re insisting that we have to go about looking at raising taxes again all while holding up the tax agreement that as signed in December,” Cantor said. “On one hand, we’re going to defend that tax agreement then go about violating it.” 
 
 Cantor promised that Republicans would oppose raising the debt limit unless it was accompanied by policy guards against increasing the deficit. 
 
 “This spending deal that was cut this week was only the beginning,” he said. “This was only the first bite of the apple. We’ve been saying that all along.” 
 
 The debt ceiling debate, he said, would be next. ||||| In a conference call Sunday with Republican House members, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) sharply criticized President Barack Obama for opposing a short-term debt increase, one that must be renewed next year instead of lasting through the end of 2012. 
 
 "The president's position of forcing us to give him a debt limit increase through the election is purely political and indefensible,"Â Mr. Cantor said, according to someone familiar with the call. "He cannot sustain or defend putting politics above the country's instance in this situation." 
 
 Many Republicans have been arguing recently that Mr. Obama is simply trying to avoid having the debt limit issue come up again in the thick of his re-election campaign. 
 
 But people familiar with the bipartisan talks led by Vice President Joseph Biden said that in those talks, Mr. Cantor repeatedly stressed that he himself would not support a short-term debt-ceiling increase. 
 
 And Mr. Cantor also told reporters last month that he opposed a short-term increase. "I have said all along, as you know, that it is my preference that we do this thing one time, again, based on the notion that we have to make some tough decision," he said at the time. "Putting off tough decisions is not what people want in this town." 
 
 Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for Mr. Cantor, said the House majority leader has always said that a long-term extension is the best path forward -- as long as it's accompanied by spending cuts at least as big as the debt-ceiling increase. A long-term increase would require raising the debt ceiling by about $2.4 trillion. 
 
 More than two weeks ago, Mr. Dayspring added, in an attempt to find middle ground, Mr. Cantor told the president that they could avoid continual disagreement by passing a shorter-term increase of $1.5 trillion while cutting $1.7 in spending. Mr. Obama responded sharply and ended the meeting, he added. 
 
 Mr. Obama and other Democrats argue that a short-term increase would prolong economic uncertainty, rattle the markets and ensure another bitter political battle when it expires in a few months. Republicans say a short-term increase makes sense if it's the only way to guarantee spending cuts that equal or exceed the size of the debt-ceiling hike. ||||| President Barack Obama and the two top House Republican leaders held an unannounced meeting at the White House Sunday, trying to get debt talks back on track with just two weeks left before the threat of default. 
 
 Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor were both part of the discussions which come even as the House GOP has scheduled floor votes Tuesday on a newly revised debt ceiling bill that is remarkable for its total absence of compromise at this late date and represents a real shift to the right. 
 
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 Boehner’s office confirmed the meeting to POLITICO Monday but said that the goal was to keep lines of communication open, not to change the legislative plan for this week. 
 
 “As we said throughout the weekend, the lines of communications are being kept open,” said Kevin Smith. “But there is nothing to report in terms of an agreement or progress. We believe cut, cap and balance represents the best path forward, and we are looking forward to the House vote on it tomorrow.” 
 
 Obama clearly disagrees, and the administration said flatly Monday that the president would veto the House bill –regardless of the debt ceiling impact—if the measure should ever reach his desk 
 
 Final revisions made Friday submerge conservative demands to reduce all federal spending to 18 percent of gross domestic product — a target that threatened to split the GOP by requiring far deeper cuts than even the party’s April budget. But Republican congressional leaders still want a 10-year, $1.8 trillion cut from nondefense appropriations and have added a balanced-budget constitutional amendment that so restricts future tax legislation that even President Ronald Reagan might have opposed it in the 1980s. 
 
 Indeed, much of the deficit-reduction legislation signed by Reagan would not qualify under the new tea-party-driven standards. And even the famed Reagan-Tip O’Neill Social Security compromise — which raised payroll taxes — passed the House in 1983 well short of the 290 votes that would be required under the constitutional amendments being promoted by the GOP. 
 
 Dubbed Cut, Cap and Balance, the House bill allows for a $2.4 trillion increase in the Treasury’s borrowing authority but effectively uses the Aug. 2 deadline as a Republican anvil on which to hammer out cuts President Barack Obama would otherwise veto. 
 
 On the Sunday talk shows, proponents praised the initiative as a “common-sense” and “real deal” framework for final negotiations with the White House and Senate Democrats. 
 
 “At least we will have demonstrated we can pass legislation to deal with the debt ceiling and put the onus on the Senate to act,” Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.) told POLITICO. But in a blistering statement, Robert Greenstein, head of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the bill “stands out as one of the most ideologically extreme pieces of major budget legislation to come before Congress in years, if not decades.” 
 
 Statutory caps would drive spending down to 19.9 percent of gross domestic product by 2021 — a $1 trillion difference with Obama in that year alone. At the same time, Pentagon appropriations are assumed to grow even as Supplemental Security Income payments for the elderly and the disabled would be exposed to future sequesters to enforce the caps. ||||| In response to Mr. Obama, Mr. Boehner said: “The sad truth is that the president wanted a blank check six months ago, and he wants a blank check today. That is just not going to happen.” 
 
 Mr. Boehner urged the president to sign a Republican plan to raise the debt limit. “If the president signs it,” he said, “the ‘crisis’ atmosphere he has created will simply disappear. The debt limit will be raised.” 
 
 Earlier in the day, in dueling news conferences on Capitol Hill, neither side showed any willingness to budge even though time was running very short, creating a distinct air of uncertainty around the Capitol about how the debt limit conflict would end. 
 
 “We’re about to go over the cliff,” Senator Harry Reid , the Nevada Democrat who serves as majority leader, said Monday afternoon as he outlined his plan. 
 
 The back and forth began when House Republicans rolled out a two-stage deficit reduction plan that would allow the $14.3 trillion federal debt limit to rise immediately by about $1 trillion in exchange for $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, and tie a second increase early next year to the ability of a new bipartisan Congressional committee to produce more deficit reduction measures. 
 
 Mr. Reid dismissed the House Republican plan as a “nonstarter” and said Republicans were essentially trying to embarrass Mr. Obama in the middle of the 2012 election year by forcing another debt limit showdown. He said Democrats would not go along with any plan that did not guarantee a debt limit increase through next year. 
 
 Democrats countered with a $2.7 trillion menu of spending cuts and an increase in the debt limit through 2012. Neither plan would require any new revenue. 
 
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 The approach assembled by Mr. Reid quickly received the president’s endorsement. Over the next 10 years, it would cut $1.2 trillion from federal agency budgets and wring savings from recurring programs like agriculture subsidies. Like some earlier Republican plans, the plan also counts about $1 trillion in savings from winding down combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan , a point objected to by House Republicans who consider such savings as budget trickery since they would occur regardless. 
 
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 “The plan is full of gimmicks,” Mr. Boehner told reporters about the Reid proposal, saying it makes no “real changes in the spending structure of our government, and it doesn’t deal with the biggest drivers of our deficit and our debt, and that would be entitlement programs.” 
 
 Rushing to beat the Senate to the punch, House Republican leaders were hoping to win approval of their measure on Wednesday and then send it to the Senate. The plan would cut current spending and put legal limits on future spending, saving what Republicans estimate to be about $1.2 trillion over 10 years. That approach would allow a debt limit increase that would extend into early next year. 
 
 At the same time, a new 12-member committee evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans would be assigned the job of finding an additional $1.8 trillion in savings. The panel would have special privileges to bring legislation before the House and Senate, and its proposal would not be subjected to amendment or Senate filibuster . If the plan passed, the president could seek a further $1.6 trillion increase in the debt limit based on the new committee’s proposal. 
 
 In addition, members of the Senate and House would also be required to vote on a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution after Oct. 1 but before the end of the year — a key demand from many House conservatives. 
 
 With House Democrats likely to line up solidly against Mr. Boehner’s plan, the Republican leadership was pleading for support among the conservative rank and file, portraying it as the best alternative to end the impasse, even though it might fall short of the deep cuts many of the Republican newcomers want. 
 
 Some of the most conservative Republican House members, including Representative Allen West of Florida , endorsed it after the leadership made its case in an afternoon meeting. But others were balking, putting the plan’s success at risk should the Republican leadership be forced to rely solely on Republican votes. By day’s end, several Republicans — including Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio , the head of the conservative Republican Study Committee — said Mr. Boehner did not have their vote. 
 
 “I can’t support it in its current form,” said Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina , citing insufficient cuts and “the dearth of confidence I have in a 12-member commission being able to do what Congress hasn’t been able to do.” 
 
 At least two Senate conservatives also came out against the House plan, showing that it would face some resistance there from both parties. 
 
 Mr. Reid and his fellow Democratic leaders have their own vote problems since they will almost certainly need 60 votes to break a filibuster and advance their proposal. That would require Mr. Reid to hold all the members of his party and win over at least seven Republicans. 
 
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 In a tactical move, Mr. Reid on Monday night declined to begin the procedural steps needed to force a Senate vote Wednesday, preferring instead to see how Mr. Boehner fared in the House. ||||| C-SPAN screen shot 
 
 I intended to write about President Obama's prime-time address on the debt ceiling, but House Speaker John Boehner's performance turned out to be the big news. Last seen Friday evening complaining that the president added new last-minute conditions in their debt-ceiling negotiations, Boehner now seems to have no memory of those negotiations, which by both parties' account left them about $400 billion apart. That's not chump change, but against the backdrop of an attempted $4 trillion deal, it didn't have to be a deal-breaker either. 
 
 But if you listened to Boehner Monday night, you'd think he and Obama never discussed a deal. In fact you'd believe the president never wanted any kind of deficit-reduction deal at all. In an impressive display of mendacity, Boehner told the American people the president wants "a blank check" to keep on spending, and the House GOP is serving "the American people" by resisting. Instead of talking about how he and Obama might close the gap they faced only three days ago, Boehner went full-tilt Tea Party crazy and presented his own plan, which requires not only brutal spending cuts but a balanced budget amendment -- as well as another congressional vote to hike the debt ceiling again at the height of the 2012 election season. 
 
 Can there be any doubt that the Republicans' only interest here is making Obama fail? Let's review all the ways they moved the goalposts since the 2010 elections gave them new power. In December Boehner told the New Yorker that raising the debt ceiling would be the new House majority’s "first really big adult moment," adding, "We’ll have to find a way to help educate members and help people understand the serious problem that would exist if we didn’t do it." For his part Obama said he expected a clean up or down vote, just like President Reagan got 18 times and George W. Bush got another seven times. But after Boehner negotiated his program-cuts-for-continuing-government deal, in April he began to make threats. "The president says I want you to send me a clean bill. Well guess what, Mr. President: Not a chance you’re going to get a clean bill," he told a GOP fundraiser. "There will not be an increase in the debt limit without something really, really big attached to it." 
 
 Obama decided to negotiate, but he demanded a dollar of tax or revenue hikes for every dollar of spending cuts. Republicans not only rejected revenue hikes, they demanded a dollar of spending cuts for every dollar the debt ceiling was raised. Obama began seeking a "grand bargain," in which he'd discuss Social Security and Medicare cuts (even though Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit) in exchange for at least revenue hikes. The earliest leaks about such a deal, believe them or not, all contained spending cuts three to five times bigger than revenue hikes. Then what happened? Boehner walked away from negotiations to close those deals -- which would have infuriated many progressives, by the way, including me. And a few weeks ago, as the president got ever more conciliating, Republicans got more stubborn, now demanding a balanced budget amendment in whatever deal is reached. 
 
 I honestly don't think anyone has come out and said how extraordinarily apocalyptic and insane it is to tie that controversial old GOP issue to the debt ceiling hike, given the disaster for the American economy if we default. The balanced budget amendment lost favor under the deficit-building Ronald Reagan, when many Republicans decided deficits weren't really an issue -- unless a Democrat held the White House. Tonight Boehner was on prime-time national television telling Americans that's what it will take to increase the debt ceiling. Now, Boehner knows a balanced budget amendment bill can't pass. Hell, he probably doesn't even want it. But this is the way the GOP ups the ante every time the president gets close to a deal. 
 
 And what did the president do? He tried to explain how we got into this mess, and he prepared us for a gut-wrenching, economy-wounding compromise. I liked a lot of Obama's speech tonight, but he made a couple of points that typify the way he ultimately negotiates against himself. He opened with that sad and useless comparison between the federal budget and household budgets. Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, among others, have explained why it's wrong until they're blue in the face -- unlike each of our little families, the federal government correctly goes into deficit spending to spur recovery from recession; in fact, the government does it because our families can't or shouldn't. Obama still found the folksy comparison irresistible. "Every family knows a little credit card debt is manageable," the president said, while arguing that anything more than "a little" hurts the economy. 
 
 His rhetorical climax also left me a little cold. Talking about Americans' many frustrations with the status quo, Obama concluded: "But do you know what people are fed up with most of all? They’re fed up with a town where compromise has become a dirty word." Does he really think that? Obama continued: 
 
 They work all day long, many of them scraping by, just to put food on the table. And when these Americans come home at night, bone-tired, and turn on the news, all they see is the same partisan three-ring circus here in Washington. They see leaders who can’t seem to come together and do what it takes to make life just a little bit better for ordinary Americans. They are offended by that. And they should be. 
 
 You know, I'm sure that's true for some people who are "scraping by." But I think it's mainly true for the Beltway elites the president hears from way too much. That's the complaint of David Brooks and Tom Friedman, and the hedge-funders backing the frivolous "third party" time-waster, Americans Elect. It's not what the unemployed and the struggling and people afraid they'll lose Social Security or Medicare benefits are "fed up with most of all." Obama can't really think that, can he? 
 
 In this political environment, anything is possible. Prepare to hear that Harry Reid's deal to cut $2.7 trillion from the budget, with absolutely no revenue increases, is a victory for Democrats. It won't be. I hope I'm wrong, but the president is dealing with a conscience-free opposition willing to risk economic tragedy to defeat him. I'd love to see all of his maneuvering result in a clean up or down vote on a debt increase (which some of his most avid supporters insist is his goal). I don't see it from here. Again, I would be thrilled to be wrong.
– According to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, President Obama had to be dragged “kicking and screaming to the table to cut spending,” he said on Fox News Sunday. Cantor says White House senior adviser David Plouffe is being dishonest in his claim that Obama was the one leading that discussion, Politico reports. Elsewhere on the Sunday dial: The president will make a major budget address Wednesday. He will lay out “his approach to long-term deficit reduction,” David Plouffe said on Meet the Press, adding that the president’s 2012 budget includes a plan to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion over the next decade. Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Schumer said on Face the Nation that details on the spending cuts included in the budget deal will be posted online tomorrow. As Plouffe was charging that not raising the debt ceiling would be a “catastrophic failure,” Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions was on Face the Nation countering that, “The president just can’t waltz in and say we’re going to have a debt crisis if we don’t raise the debt limit … He’s going to have to meet Congress halfway—really the American people halfway.” John Boehner, meanwhile, told donors this weekend that “there will not be an increase in the debt limit without something really, really big attached to it.” The president still wants to raise taxes on the rich, Plouffe said. “He has said he believes taxes on the higher income—people over $250,000—should eventually go up. … I think the president’s goal—and he's been clear about this—is to protect the middle class as we move forward here.”