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House Republican Leaders Plan To Renege On Debt Ceiling Deal
Think Progress / News Report
Published: Wednesday 14 March 2012
“Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives are ready to break a hard-fought budget deal with Democrats.”
Last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) signaled during an interview with Fox Business that he was open to reneging on the budget deal the GOP crafted with Democrats last year during the debacle over raising the nation’s debt ceiling. Though the parties agreed in that deal on a spending level for the 2013 budget, Boehner is being pushed by the more conservative members of his party to cut even deeper.
And according to Reuters, that pressure has paid off, as both Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-OH) are ready to cut below the level specified in the debt ceiling deal:
Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives are ready to break a hard-fought budget deal with Democrats as they try to quell a revolt by conservatives who are insisting on deeper spending cuts ahead of the November elections.
House Republican aides said on Tuesday that House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor were pressing for a modest $19 billion reduction of discretionary spending caps in this year’s Republican budget plan.
“I’m really disappointed that they’re considering a budget – violating the budget agreement that is now the law of this country. This was designed to avoid another government shutdown or a threat of a shutdown,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). “We had a deal last August on the budget numbers, and we expect them to live with that deal,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) has said. The end result of this standoff could be yet another impending government shutdown, as the government’s current spending authority expires on September 30.
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ABOUT Pat Garofalo
Pat Garofalo is Economic Policy Editor for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Pat’s work has also appeared in The Nation, U.S. News & World Report, The Guardian, the Washington Examiner, and In These Times. He has been a guest on MSNBC and Al-Jazeera television, as well as many radio shows. Pat graduated from Brandeis University, where he was the editor-in-chief of The Brandeis Hoot, Brandeis’ community newspaper, and worked for the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life.
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By Ronnie Cummins
4 comments on "House Republican Leaders Plan To Renege On Debt Ceiling Deal"
March 14, 2012 4:10pm
A POWER GRAB -FROM THE CESS POOL . . . COMMUNIST
March 14, 2012 2:17pm
Of course they want to go back on the budget deal. They need to get the conversation back to austerity and away from income distribution. Get it back to austerity to force cuts that will stall the nascent economic recovery that is just now taking place. If they don't stop the economy from growing and get people thinking that the government is spending too much they won't win in November, and that is the only thing they care about. But I think they may have made a major mistake. They have managed to piss off about 75% of the women in this country and as we married men can testify to, Women never ever forget being dissed. EVER..
March 14, 2012 12:23pm
Surprise, surprise. Rethugs lie. Who would have thought that rethugs and teabaggers have absolutely no integrity and that their words and handshakes are totally worthless, especially the ones who claim to be "Christians".
March 14, 2012 11:44am
When we're told that House Republican leaders intend to renege on the debt ceiling, what's surprising is that they can do so, not that they want to do so. The intention, then, seems to be to stop government activity in its tracks. Isn't there a remedy for that allowed in the Constitution? If the Constitution is to be yet again ignored (now the President declares war, rather than the Congress doing so), perhaps the President can take on himself the power to, in some way, ignore what the House of Representatives decides, with the approval of the Senate. What we have is already a sad joke where those powerful individuals who control the corporation bribe politicians and even Supreme Court judges to do as these individuals wish, never mind the needs of the people of the U.S.