Democrats still wary of brewing debt deal
President Obama says he is intent on passing a "balanced" plan to reduce the deficit while raising the debt ceiling, but reports that the president is working on a deal with House Speaker John Boehner have Democrats frustrated and concerned.
On the Senate floor this morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid warned his fellow leaders against any drastic moves.
"We all know... there are talks going on between President Obama and Speaker Boehner. I wish them well," he said. "I say to both the president and the speaker here on the Senate floor, representing my Democrats and I'm confident many Republicans: Be very careful, show a lot of caution as this negotiation goes forward, because any arrangement must be fair to all America, not just the wealthy."
A Democratic congressional aide told CBS News Thursday that Mr. Obama has been working with Boehner to reach a deal that would include $3 trillion in deficit reduction but only the promise of tax reform. Publicly, both the White House and Boehner have denied any such deal is in the works.
The president maintains any deal must include new government funding sources.
"A balanced deficit deal that includes some new revenues isn't just a Democratic position," Mr. Obama wrote in a USA Today op-ed this morning. "It's a position that has been taken by everyone from Warren Buffett to Bill O'Reilly. It's a position that was taken this week by Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, who worked together on a promising plan of their own. And it's been the position of every Democratic and Republican leader who has worked to reduce the deficit in their time, from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton."
Still, Democrats say they're concerned about reports of negotiations between Boehner and Mr. Obama and the lack of details they've received.
"It's very frustrating," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said coming out of a meeting today regarding the ongoing debt talks. She said there is frustration within her caucus over the issue of taxes, as well as the level of cuts that may emerge out any deal.
"I think we need to know what the cuts are... how they happen," she said. "There are ways of doing this that I wouldn't have a problem with... You can increase the Medicare age -- a month a year, or two months a year -- those kinds of things. But I don't know what is inherent when you agree to a cut of so many billion in a program."
Feinstein and other Senate Democrats only learned of the reported negotiations between Mr. Obama and Boehner Thursday evening -- when the news broke publicly -- while in a meeting with White House budget director Jacob Lew.
The senators in the meeting interrogated Lew about the possible deal for 45 minutes, the Washington Post reports, with Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland declaring afterwards, "I haven't seen a meeting like this in my 35 years in Congress."
With his own party wary of his actions, the president isn't getting much help from the other side of the aisle either. On Senate floor this morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said President Obama "is doing his best impersonation of a fiscal moderate."
