John Boehner: Debt Ceiling Deal Needed Within A Month

WASHINGTON -- Washington needs to wrap up a deal to increase borrowing authority within a month to avoid rattling financial markets, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said on Wednesday.

Boehner told reporters he is "ready to proceed" in talks with President Barack Obama and called on him to get more involved.

But the top Republican reiterated that "significant reductions in spending and changes to the budget process" had to be included in any deal to raise the Treasury Department's borrowing authority, which now stands at $14.3 trillion.

Boehner spoke to reporters several hours after he and other House Republicans met with Obama to talk about deficit-cutting. Boehner called those talks "frank, polite, to the point."

In later saying that he now was ready to plunge into talks with Obama, Boehner stopped short of saying the deficit-reduction negotiations headed by Vice President Joe Biden should be abandoned in favor of Obama-Boehner talks.

"I'm not going to set the parameters on how we ought to proceed," Boehner said.

Asked whether he was satisfied with the progress of the Biden talks, which include a bipartisan group of six members of the House and Senate, Boehner said, "The issues they're dealing with have to be dealt with. They're making some marginal progress but at the rate that that's going, we'll be right up against the wall."

The Treasury Department says it needs to have its borrowing authority raised by August 2 or risk some sort of government default.

Boehner urged speeding up the negotiating process in order to avoid financial market upheavals.

"This really needs to be done over the next month if we're serious about no brinksmanship, no rattling investors," he said.

Boehner also said that "nobody out there believes the U.S. is going to default on its debt."

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Bill Trott)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[tigereon]

06:47 PM on 06/02/2011

Senator McConnell today again used the GOP talking point that million of Americans have to make tough decisions every day sitting around the kitchen table, and that the Democrats needed to act more like them. In response Sen. Reid asked McConnell if he was an "idiot"

http://thetop10.squarespace.com/the-politics-of-it-all/2011/6/2/senator-reid-asks-mitch-mcconnell-if-he-is-an-idiot.html

[idisVA]

06:34 PM on 06/02/2011

Moody has warned America today to get its act together and raise the debt ceiling to avoid adverse effects on the economy.

[Donna1224]

05:55 PM on 06/02/2011

Boehner is the biggest flip flopper of them all! He acts and talks like he wants to work out a deal, but then he starts throwing one of his Republican tantrums and demanding that huge cuts in the deficit be made! Is he leaning towards McConnels threat of cutting Medicare in order to get the GOP to vote on raising the debt ceiling or not? He cannot continue to play chicken with us! He needs to be reminded that his past President had the debt ceiling raised five times when he was in office and there was no problem with the GOP doing whatever Bush wanted. Why not now? Could it be that there is a black Democrat in charge now?

[Judy Rauch]

06:08 PM on 06/02/2011

This is all rubbish Boehner will do what Wall Street tells him to do. They allow him to yak yak now and then then they pull his strings back to reality

[SolarArray]

05:23 PM on 06/02/2011

Great, got the solution. Cut the deficit by more than what's needed and raise the debt ceiling = introduce full single payer health care for every American.

[ReedYoung]

05:12 PM on 06/02/2011

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and everybody who knows anything about economics has been warning congressgops that letting the debt ceiling fall below the nation's spending would be, to put it simply, a Very Bad Thing. No sector of the business community has been supporting, at least not publicly, the congressgops budgetary hostage-taking, so I've been wondering, who are these "representatives" representing? Whose interests are they serving? Saudi Arabia / al Qaeda? Communist China? I think I have finally come up with a less conspiracy theory possibility. I think this is retribution for putting the gop's off-budget wars on the books. Well, whatever their motives, it's terribly childish and dishonest of them to now try to balance the federal budget on the backs of middle class and poor income earners, when everybody knows that the budget has been broken by tax cuts for the over-privileged, reckless risk-taking on the part of the over-privileged, and a war in Iraq which has financially benefitted only the over-privileged in the weapons and mercenary labor industry.

[brklynivn]

05:09 PM on 06/02/2011

He's going to get a show to his head if he thinks he's going to privatize medicare.

[DanBeach]

05:00 PM on 06/02/2011

House GOP cuts to nutrition assistance equal one week of Bush tax cuts for millionaires http://thkpr.gs/kkdcSg

[lNSCOUT]

04:55 PM on 06/02/2011

OH WELL.....talk to your teapublicans.........

[1kant2]

04:49 PM on 06/02/2011

I agree with him on this: Obama this is an impending disaster and it is time you get out publically and start driving the threat the GOP offers home. No more dilly dallying.

[Gestas]

04:39 PM on 06/02/2011

The Republicans are about to take us on another trip to the bottom....with no one to blame but themselves...Lock,Stock and Barrel.

[lNSCOUT]

04:59 PM on 06/02/2011

It will not happen.....they will all cave......they've already got their marching orders from the same Koch controlled Wall Streeters that astroturf their party.....it's just to see how much they can drain from the Democrats...I say GIVE THEM NOTHING! let them do themselves in.

either they get it from the teapublicans for raising the debt ceiling OR\
they get it from the elites in their base when the economy implodes....either way....IT'S a WIN FOR DEMOCRATS! let them wallow.

[Judy Rauch]

06:10 PM on 06/02/2011

You are so right and all we need is Obama to back us

[errol44]

04:12 PM on 06/02/2011

Boehner said, ""This really needs to be done over the next month if we're serious about no brinksmanship.." Holding our economic stability hostage in order to put the squeeze on seniors is not "brinksmanship?"

[myrtle1909]

03:45 PM on 06/02/2011

If you do not want to see the US default on it's bills Mr. Boehner why don't you agree to raising the debt ceiling now and work out a budget later. You refuse to put tax increases for the rich on the table and yet you want to kill Medicare. Your're not going to get very far unless you are ready to comprimise. Just because th republicans have put themselves in a spot over Ryan's plan that could prevent them from getting re-elected in 2012 dosen't mean the democrats are foolish enough to jump off the same bridge with them.

[kkcothi]

03:29 PM on 06/02/2011

Did he cry and stamp his feet ?

[Gestas]

04:41 PM on 06/02/2011

Boehner only cries and stamps his feet when it looks like He's going to miss Happy Hour.

[lNSCOUT]

05:00 PM on 06/02/2011

Where's the 'laser focus on jobs'?

[ahzzz]

03:28 PM on 06/02/2011

And feels the plasterboard crack under the weight of the GOP and their self serving ilk.

[Lohan7]

03:20 PM on 06/02/2011

Let Boehner and the gop block the raising of the debt ceiling. The only way the gop will recognize how incompetent they are is if they collapse the country's economy - AGAIN. And then, just maybe, the people that voted for them will realize it too.

[lNSCOUT]

05:01 PM on 06/02/2011

No, I thought that after 8 years of Bush they'd learn.........not so smart some of this country.