Biden, Republicans start talking debt reduction
Vice President Joe Biden held his first in a series of budget meetings with congressional negotiators this morning, seeking some kind of compromise on meaningful debt and deficit reduction.
The meeting was held at Blair House, across the street from the White House, and participants said the focus today was on areas of "commonality" and "general agreement." In a two-sentence statement, the vice president said "we had a good, productive first meeting today. We plan to meet again." The meeting will be next Tuesday, May 10th.
Republicans are approaching the talks with some skepticism, and question how serious Democrats are about cutting the deficit when they have failed to produce a budget reflecting those goals in the Senate. While both sides were allowed to appoint up to four negotiators to the Biden meetings, Republicans only assigned two: Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.).
"I went in and represented the position that says, look, if we're going to achieve results, any measure will have to pass the House," Cantor said. "The House has taken a firm position against anything having to do with increasing taxes or raising tax rates."
Democrats argue that the Bush-era tax cuts, extended in January, are among the main contributors to the current deficit. "I don't see how you can possibly talk about serious deficit reduction without talking about three things: cuts in spending, waste, fraud and abuse, which we are always on the alert for, and a change in the revenue stream," meaning higher taxes on the wealthy, said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi today.
House Republicans continue to send mixed signals about how married they are to their contentious cost-cutting plan to privatize Medicare.
"I'm not interested in laying down more markers," said House Ways and Means Chair Dave Camp (R-Mich.), acknowledging that the Medicare plan likely would not garner the votes to pass in the Democratically-controlled Senate. "I'm interested in solutions... Let's figure out where there is common ground and let's get there as soon as we can."
But House Speaker John Boehner, speaking at his weekly press conference, insisted that "nothing is off the table except raising taxes." When I asked Speaker Boehner about Camp's comments regarding the Medicare plan, he said "My interpretation of what Mr. Camp was, was a recognition of the political realities that we face."
A "gang of six" senators, three Republicans and three Democrats, is also working separately to come up with a comprehensive, bipartisan deficit reduction package that could pass both the House and the Senate. Last year, President Obama appointed an 18-member commission of current and former lawmakers and policy experts to come up with a comprehensive plan to attack the deficit. Their final report proposed $4 trillion in deficit reduction through the year 2020, but failed to win the 14 of 18 votes needed to automatically send the plan to Congress for a vote.
