Impasse Grinds On as House Says Its Offer Was Rejected
Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency
Speaker John A. Boehner, left, arrived for a meeting with House Republicans, who expressed anger at President Obama.
By ASHLEY PARKER and JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: October 12, 2013
WASHINGTON — Budget negotiations broke down on Saturday — just days before the nation reaches its borrowing limit — as angry Republicans said that President Obama had rejected their latest offer.
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Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency
Democratic members of the House waited in line on Saturday to sign a petition to reopen the federal government at the Capitol in Washington.
“It’s now up to the Senate Republicans to stand up,” said Representative Raúl R. Labrador of Idaho after House Republicans left a closed-door meeting in the Capitol.
The message from Speaker John A. Boehner had been grim, Republicans said. Representative John Carter of Texas described Mr. Obama as “acting like a royal president.”
“He’s still ‘my way or the highway,’ ” Mr. Carter said.
With House Republicans insisting that they have all but run out of options, and the House not scheduled to meet again until Monday, attention turned to the Senate, where Republicans have spent the past several days trying to gin up Democratic support for a proposal they hope could reopen the government and extend the debt-ceiling through the end of January.
“The question is: What will Senate Republicans do, what will Senate Democrats do?” said Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois.
Though House Republicans — especially the more hard-line conservatives — remain reluctant to accept any proposal that comes out of the Democratic-controlled Senate, even if it has substantial Republican-backing, the question now facing Mr. Boehner is whether he will be forced to send any Senate offering to the House floor for a vote.
With concern growing that global financial markets could be thrown into turmoil if Congress does not agree to raise the debt ceiling by Thursday, Republicans said they did not know whether Mr. Boehner would have enough support from his most conservative members to put a plan that passes the Senate up for a vote.
Many Republicans said that however frustrated they were that the White House would not negotiate with them, they were just as dismayed with their own colleagues who would not back down from their demand that any deal include provisions to chip away at the president’s health care law.
“The problem here is that we don’t have a functioning majority,” said Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California. “After three weeks of this, they’re still not figuring it out. I don’t know what it takes.”
The proposal House Republican presented to the White House late last week called for increasing the Treasury Department’s authority to borrow money through Nov. 22, but only if Mr. Obama agreed to more expansive talks about overhauling the budget.
The collapse of talks with the White House further soured an already tense relationship between House Republicans and the president. Representative Aaron Schock, Republican of Illinois, called the development “a total breakdown in trust.”
“You don’t tell the speaker, the majority leader, the majority whip, ‘We’re going to negotiate,’ then they come and tell our entire conference, ‘We’re going to negotiate,’ and then 24 hours later, you recant,” he said.
The Senate was expected to open debate on Saturday on a Democratic proposal that would extend the debt ceiling through the end of 2014, with no strings attached. The plan appeared to lack enough Republican votes to pass, but was intended to pressure Republicans to take action to avert what could be a staggering fiscal crisis if the government defaults on its debts.
Despite the expected failure of the Senate Democrats’ proposal, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, could execute a procedural maneuver known as a motion to recommit that would allow him to bring the plan to a vote again.
Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, were also working to nail down the details of their own plan, which would extend the debt ceiling through the end of January and include a stopgap spending measure to reopen the government and finance it through the end of March.
The 23-page plan would simultaneously call for an immediate bipartisan conference of members of the House and the Senate to address broader budget concerns. Republicans hoped the conference would consider some of the cuts to social programs — like means-testing for Medicare benefits — that Mr. Obama has suggested could be options.
The plan would also call for a delay, or at least an easing, of a tax on medical devices unpopular with some Democrats, and would give government agencies more flexibility on how to carry out the existing across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration.
When Ms. Collins presented a similar proposal to the president during a meeting on Friday, Mr. Obama called it “constructive.”
But some House Republicans remained skeptical that any Senate plan could pass muster in the Republican-controlled House. Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky said that the Republican conference remained “very united” and that it was unlikely to cede any ground as long as Mr. Obama continued to treat the standoff as “still a game.”
Mr. Reid warned that time was running out. “Each hour that goes by we’re closer to a calamity for our country,” he said.
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