Debt ceiling duel

WASHINGTON-One side wants President Barack Obama to cut spending and reform entitlements. The other side pushes the president to raise taxes and leave entitlements unchanged.

Two very different White House meetings in two days this week show just how far apart Democrats and Republicans are on what will be this summer's hottest debate: to raise or not to raise the nation's debt ceiling.

On Thursday, House Democrats met with Obama and gave him their theories on how to address the debt and deficit problems.

"We must preserve Medicare, we must protect Medicaid, and we must have revenue raising," Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said in a briefing with reporters after the meeting.

But just a day earlier, House Republicans got to pitch their very different solutions during their own White House meeting. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., warned that the president should "keep out of the discussions surrounding the debt limit . . . any notion that we are going to increase taxes. It is counterintuitive to believe that you increase taxes on those individuals and entities you are expecting to create jobs."

House Speaker John Boehner wants to complete a deal to raise the debt ceiling by the end of June. That's more than a month before the Aug. 2 deadline set by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for when the government would default on its financial obligations.

"This surely needs to be done in the next month if we're serious about no brinkmanship and rattling of swords," Boehner said.

But brinkmanship and rattling of swords is what occurred during most of the House's post-Memorial Day work week.

It began on Tuesday when House Republicans held a vote they knew would fail. To the surprise of no one, the House overwhelmingly voted down legislation to increase the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion without any strings attached. With just 97 voting for the measure and 318 voting against the increase, the vote was meant to be a message to Democrats that any debt increase must include significant spending cuts.

The theatrics continued during Wednesday's White House meeting when Republican representatives and Obama took turns criticizing one another and calling into question one another's leadership abilities. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, the author of a conservative budget that privatizes portions of Medicare, pushed Obama to stop mischaracterizing the plan. Obama responded by saying both sides have engaged in political gamesmanship during the deficit debates of 2011.

But in the midst of highly publicized speeches and clear-the-air closed door meetings one thing has failed to emerge: a specific plan for boosting the debt limit while also curtailing federal spending.

The absence of such a plan and the wide gap that exists between the philosophies of the two parties puts serious doubts into Boehner's goal to resolve the debt-ceiling crisis by the end of this month.

Congress' recent track record shows that-like college students cramming for exams at the end of every semester-federal lawmakers specialize in waiting until the last minute to get anything done. In April, lawmakers averted a government shutdown barely an hour before the final deadline.

But a fair question for conservatives to ask is will an early deal be in the best interest of those trying to pair a debt ceiling increase with sizeable spending cuts.

Many in the large group of freshmen House Republicans were disappointed in the deal reached earlier this year to finalize the 2011 budget resolution. Fifty-nine Republicans voted against it, which forced GOP House leaders to secure Democratic votes for its passage. The angst over the deal increased after the Congressional Budget Office said the spending reductions in that resolution may cut just $352 million-not the $38 billion initially promised-from this year's $1.6 trillion deficit.

More substantial spending cuts are needed in the debt ceiling package, and conservatives will be watching to see what concessions Boehner and the rest of the GOP leadership can secure from Democrats this time around.

The White House is asking that the debt ceiling be increased from its current level of $14.3 trillion to $16.7 trillion

Geithner, who met with House freshmen on Thursday, has repeatedly warned that an economic catastrophe would occur if the ceiling is not raised by Aug. 2. That is a date that many Republicans point out has already changed at least four times.

"The Obama administration has been compelling Washington to employ its Big Government strategy by predicting doomsday if Congress fails to engage in a massive spend-and-borrow spree," said Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, a freshman on the House Budget Committee.

But, in the face of the administration's dire warning about the consequences of not raising the ceiling, it seems likely that the side with the most to lose resides in the White House. Many lawmakers predict that Obama will relent to the demands of conservatives rather than risk an economic meltdown just as he heads into his reelection campaign. But it remains to be seen if the president will agree to spending reductions close to the trillions of dollars in cuts most Republicans are demanding. Even if Obama does somehow meet Republican demands, another hurdle remains: convincing congressional Democrats to go along with such cuts.

Many Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, are demanding that entitlement reform be a part of any debt ceiling deal. That may be a pill too big for most Democrats to swallow, especially after they have spent the last several weeks demonizing Republicans for their Medicare reforms.

"This is the moment," Boehner pleaded this week. "This is the window of opportunity. We know what the problems are. Let's not kick the can down the road one more time."

Despite such rally-the-troops rhetoric, it seems likely that the usual partisan ingredients exist for some spectacular fireworks that likely will not be completely ignited until after the Fourth of July holiday . . . well after Boehner's end of June goal.