President Obama will make a statement on deficit talks from the White House briefing room at 6PM ET according to the White House. We'll be following it here.
2:59 PM PT: MSNBC reports that there appears to be a major stall in talks.
3:01 PM PT: NYTimes.com: "House Speaker Boehner Pulls Out of Debt Ceiling Talks" MSNBC reports Boehner will also abandon the negotiations.
3:02 PM PT: MSNBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports Boehner says he will be working directly with the Senate to pass a deal.
3:03 PM PT: Boehner is on crack if he thinks Reid will pass a bill that President Obama doesn't support.
3:04 PM PT: Still waiting for the President, but let's see either a clean debt ceiling, or the President ignoring the debt limit. President Obama can't let the tea party destroy the American economy.
3:05 PM PT: President Obama says he got a call 30 minutes ago from John Boehner that he'd be walking away from the negotiations.
3:06 PM PT: President Obama is now talking about a big deal in the past tense. Explains why he believes we "should have had" a big deal. He's now running through all of the things he offered to Boehner.
3:06 PM PT: Here's video:
3:09 PM PT: "In the interest of deficit reduction, I was willing to take a lot of heat from my party." Note again the use of past tense. "It's hard to understand why John Boehner would walk away. [...] Republicans are surprised it couldn't get done."
3:10 PM PT: "If you don't have revenues the entire thing ends up being tilted on the backs of the poor and middle-class families."
3:11 PM PT: "So here's what we're going to. We have run out of time." Calls Boehner/Reid/Pelosi/McConnell to the White House by 11AM. Says they must explain to him how they are going to raise the debt ceiling. "We have run out of time." (From me: here's the answer: To raise the debt limit, raise the debt limit.) President Obama says this extension must last through the 2012 election otherwise it will jeopardize economic growth.
3:12 PM PT: "I expect them to have an answer as to how they are going to get this done over the course of the next week." Says he still believes a balanced plan is the way to go. Will now take questions.
3:14 PM PT: Question is what does Obama want to see going forward, and what is his personal relationship. Obama says he had expected Boehner to tell his caucus to do the right thing, but now he can't get a call returned. "I've been left at the alter a few times." The question he wants to know is whether House Republicans can say yes to anything? If they can't agree to reduce deficit without tax rate increases and without breaking Norquist's pledge, then "what can they say yes to?"
3:16 PM PT: Salutes Pelosi and Reid for being will to compromise. "So far I have not seen" House Republicans having the capacity to compromise. "Where's the leadership?"
3:16 PM PT: As for road ahead: "At a minimum, we need to raise the debt limit." Says he's willing to take the responsibility for raising it (the McConnell plan). "If they want to give me the responsibility to do it, I'm happy to do it."
3:19 PM PT: Question is whether he can assure Americans that they will get there Social Security checks on August 3. Answer: "If we default, then we're going to have to make adjustments." Doesn't go in to much more detail than that, but on the question of who is to blame, he says not raising the limit should not even be an option. He says everybody will be to blame, but he details everything he's done to try to get Republicans to lift the ceiling.