Speaker Boehner withdrew abruptly at the climax of the talks, leaving the White House surprised and dissatisfied. Here's more on this story from
TalkingPointsMemo:
President Obama and White House officials were taken off guard by Speaker John Boehner's (R-OH) decision to walk away from the negotiating table on Friday, believing they were closing in on a deal with only three remaining sticking points.
As of Thursday evening, according to White House officials, Obama and Boehner had been working on a grand bargain deficit-reduction deal that would produce roughly $3 trillion in savings over 10 years. But talks broke down along three major differences: the two sides were $400 billion apart on tax cuts, Obama rejected a last minute demand from the GOP that the deal in include a repeal of the individual mandate in healthcare reform, and the two sides were still haggling over a difference of $40 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, according to the White House.
They believed they were close to the delivery of the deal on the table to an expectant Congress, but Speaker Boehner's recalcitrance and his fear of being held responsible for being a party to this relationship was what did this deal in. It is good to know that President Obama rejected the repeal of the insurance mandate, as this is what he had staked his presidency on since he said that was required to make ACA workable as a law.
Speaker Boehner wanted more cuts to Medicare and Medicaid than what the President had already offered to him, and the revenues part was unpalatable for Boehner and the Speaker just couldn't swallow that easily. He spat on that instead.
The orange-hued Speaker also claims that it was President Obama who walked away, which is false since the White House had worked in good faith with Speaker Boehner and other House Republicans from the start by offering up Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in exchange for revenues. To be clear,
it was Boehner who walked away from what the President characterizes as an extraordinary deal:
Yet even as the letter was going out Friday evening, Obama walked into the White House briefing room to declare that Boehner had walked away from “an extraordinary deal.”
“I just got a call a half hour ago from Speaker Boehner who indicated that he was going to be walking away from negotiations with the White House for a big deficit reduction package,” Obama said. “I think we should have moved forward with a big deal. … It is hard to understand why Boehner would have walked away from this deal.”
Indeed, despite Boehner’s disclaimer, the outlines of a $3 trillion-plus deficit reduction package had been in place including what would have been substantial savings in Medicare and more than $1 trillion from appropriations over the next decade. Republican leadership aides, who briefed reporters on the talks, credited the administration with committing to structural changes to Medicare as well to try to bend the cost curve in a second 10 year period after 2021 as well.
The debt ceiling situation is still not resolved, and the McConnell-Reid deal, which initially was a clean debt ceiling increase, was evolving into one that involved spending cuts. If spending cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are still on the table, then this is unacceptable for this progressive Democrat. I do not thank the President for putting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid on the chopping block. You can't put that genie back in the bottle once it's out.
That isn't what I celebrate, or call a part of some rope-a-dope strategy. Once a Democratic President puts these programs out or targets them for cuts, that's hard to spin going into the fall elections. This approach did not have to be taken, and nor did it have to be made.