text: Boehner absolves GOP defectors, seeks to reassert his command 
   
   By Russell Berman - 
   
   Battered by division and defections, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is setting out to re-unify his conference and prove to Democrats in the White House and the Senate that he can command a governing majority of the House. 
   
   Boehner, who lost 12 of his members in a surprisingly hairy reelection vote, took the first steps in a closed-door conference meeting Friday morning. Boehner told lawmakers he would not seek to punish the Republicans who deserted him on the House floor Thursday. 
   
   "I'm not a retribution kind of guy. I don't hold grudges," Boehner said in the meeting, according to several people in the room. "My door is always open, whether you voted for me, or didn’t vote for me.” 
   
   Lawmakers say the next two to three months of fiscal battles will be a crucial period for Boehner, who begins the 113th Congress with a smaller majority that includes a cadre of conservatives who have gone public in their opposition to his leadership. 
   
   The Speaker's immediate goal, members say, is to craft legislation that raises the debt ceiling and cuts spending while winning 218 Republican votes in the House. 
   
   “One, we have to craft the right legislation. Two, we have to have a spirit of teamwork within our caucus,” second-term Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) said. “It’s important for us to be passing bills that can get to 218 out of here.” 
   
   For Boehner, getting Republicans on the same page has been harder than ever in the two months since the November election. He could not rally his conference around a fallback "fiscal-cliff" bill in December, and nearly two-thirds of House Republicans voted against the final Senate compromise on New Year's Day. 
   
   Beyond fiscal issues, however, Republicans pushed back and ultimately scrapped plans to vote on a five-year farm bill and major postal reform, in large measure because the leadership could not secure enough GOP votes to pass them. 
   
   The defections against Boehner in the vote for Speaker made clear that his struggle to unify the House GOP will continue in the 113th Congress. They serve as a warning to Boehner of the risks in repeatedly bringing bills to the floor that do not have majority Republican support. 
   
   “Clearly, this is not a group of trained poodles on the House floor,” Huizenga said. “You’ve got some very independent-thinking, strong-willed people, and that’s healthy for a democracy.” 
   
   The House is on recess next week, and lawmakers expect the debt-ceiling bill to be a central topic of discussion at the party's annual retreat in Williamsburg on Jan. 17-18. 
   
   At the conference meeting Friday, Boehner told House Republicans he would insist that an increase in the debt limit be accompanied by spending cuts and that the public was on the GOP’s side. 
   
   “With the [fiscal] cliff behind us, the focus turns to spending,” Boehner said, according to a person in the room. “The president says he isn't going to have a debate with us over the debt ceiling. He also says he's not going to cut spending along with the debt limit hike.” 
   
   The Speaker cited a new poll conducted just before the new year by the Winston Group, a Republican firm, which found that 72 percent of respondents “agree any increase in the nation's debt limit must be accompanied by spending cuts and reforms of a greater amount.” 
   
   Boehner first laid out that principle in a 2011 speech in New York, and has said he will stick to it as Congress debates the debt ceiling in the next two months. The Treasury Department said the nation hit its $16.4-trillion borrowing limit in late December and estimates the next increase must occur before March. 
   
   President Obama has vowed not to negotiate over the debt ceiling again, setting up another confrontation in the weeks ahead. Republicans will also be looking at the same time to enact spending cuts to replace automatic reductions to defense and domestic spending set now to take effect in March. And Congress faces another deadline one month later to extend government funding and prevent a shutdown. 
   
   Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.), the new chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, said the party has found more success unifying around policies it opposes than coalescing around positions it supports. 
   
   “There has to be a lot of communication as to where we’re going to try to go,” he said. “If we can’t get to a focus on what we are going to do, then it is a little more challenging.” 
   
   Lankford said the House GOP is determined to act affirmatively on the debt ceiling, in the hopes it will put pressure on the Senate and not be forced to accept a last-minute compromise, as it has in year-end tax battles in both 2011 and 2012. 
   
   “We’re going to get ahead of it, I can tell you that,” Lankford said. “We’re not going to wait until the last second.” 
   
   While many lawmakers bemoaned the defections from Boehner as an embarrassment that weakens his leadership, Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said it could help him in one respect. 
   
   “In a bizarre way, I think it strengthens Boehner’s hand,” said Griffith, a former majority leader of the Virginia House of Delegates. “It makes it clear to the president that he’s got a bunch of folks who want to do something about spending, and they’re serious.” 
   
   As a former legislative leader, Griffith said he empathized with Boehner, even if he didn’t always agree with him. 
   
   “It’s also easier to sit on the outside of a leadership position and throw stones,” he said. “It’s much harder to be in his shoes.” ||||| President Barack Obama is hailing a last-minute deal that avoids the so-called fiscal cliff but says it's just one step in a broader effort to boost the economy and shrink federal deficits. 
   
   FILE - In this Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013, file photo, the dome of the Capitol is reflected in a skylight of the Capitol Visitor's Center in Washington. By delaying hard choices on spending, the fiscal cliff... (Associated Press) 
   
   Obama said in his radio and Internet address Saturday that the new law _ approved by Congress on New Year's Day and signed Thursday _ raises taxes on the wealthiest Americans while preventing a middle-class tax hike that could have thrown the economy back into recession. 
   
   With the "fiscal cliff" crisis barely over, Obama faces new battles in Congress over raising the country's $16.4 trillion borrowing limit, as well as more than $100 billion in automatic spending cuts for the military and domestic programs which were delayed by two months under the compromise. 
   
   Lawmakers promise to replace those across-the-board cuts with more targeted steps that could take longer to implement. 
   
   Obama _ speaking from Hawaii, where he is on vacation with his family _ said he is willing to consider more spending cuts and tax increases to reduce the deficit. 
   
   But he said he "will not compromise" over his insistence that Congress lift the federal debt ceiling without negotiations. The nation's credit rating was downgraded the last time lawmakers threatened inaction on the debt ceiling, in 2011. 
   
   "Our families and our businesses cannot afford that dangerous game again," Obama said. 
   
   If elected officials from both parties "focus on the interests of our country above the interests of party, I'm convinced we can cut spending and raise revenue in a manner that reduces our deficit and protects the middle class," Obama said. 
   
   In the Republican address, Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan said that as attention again turns to the debt limit, "we must identify responsible ways to tackle Washington's wasteful spending." 
   
   Americans know that "when you have no more money in your account and your credit cards are maxed out, then the spending must stop," Camp said.
target: – The dozen Republican members of Congress who gave John Boehner a public rebuke this week don't have to worry about payback, he says. "I'm not a retribution kind of guy," he told a closed-door conference meeting yesterday, reports the Hill. "I don't hold grudges." Boehner got re-elected to a second term as speaker, but the vote was unusually close thanks to the largely conservative gang of 12 who either voted for someone else or abstained. Boehner will need all the unity he can get for his next task—getting a bill passed that raises the debt ceiling. He told Republicans that he will insist any such action be paired with spending cuts, a move he says the public supports. But President Obama reiterated today in his weekly address that Congress must raise the ceiling without negotiations, reports AP. It's a "dangerous game," he said. "If Congress refuses to give the United States the ability to pay its bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy could be catastrophic."