Courtesy of Mish.
President Obama has called for a news conference at 2:00 PM but what can he say that he already hasn’t said.
1. A default would be catastrophic
2. He will not negotiate the budget until a “clean” debt ceiling bill is passed
3. Boehner should put a “clean” bill up for vote in the House
Split Screen Sniping
Bloomberg reports
The White House, in a statement, urged Boehner to allow a vote on raising the debt limit and repeated that only Congress can authorize more borrowing. Obama, who will make a statement and take questions in the White House briefing room, is willing to negotiate after Republicans end the shutdown and remove the risk of default, the statement said.
The split-screen sniping — with Boehner speaking to reporters and Reid speaking on the Senate floor — came as lawmakers are taking the first tentative steps toward resolving the standoff.
Senate Democrats are planning a test vote before the end of this week on a measure that would grant Obama authority to raise the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling, probably for a year unless two-thirds of both chambers of Congress disapprove.
“The American people are watching an unwillingness by one side to negotiate and compromise,” Representative Tom McClintock, a California Republican, told reporters in Washington today. “They are watching utterly vindictive actions by the administration to intensify the pain of the shutdown and I think they watching the collapse of the admininstration’s signature program, Obamacare.”
House Democrats rejected the idea, saying it would recreate the 2011 bipartisan supercommittee that deadlocked.
“We don’t need a supercommittee,” said Representative Xavier Becerra, a California Democrat. “The votes exist right now” to reopen the government.
If all Senate Democrats along with six Republicans vote for giving Obama authority, they could send a debt-limit increase without policy conditions to the Republican-controlled House early next week. That would put pressure on Boehner, who opposes a clean debt-limit bill.
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