White House budget talks with Senate Republicans break off

Reuters ^ | Fri Aug 30, 2013 6:26pm EDT | David Lawder

[Olog-hai]

Budget talks between the White House and a small group of U.S. Republican senators have reached an impasse, eliminating Washington’s only active channel for resolving deep fiscal differences as key deadlines loom, senators and aides said on Friday.

A meeting on Thursday between the eight senators and White House chief of staff Denis McDonough failed to produce any movement toward a deal to reduce “unsustainable debt and deficits,” said Senator Dan Coats, a Republican from Indiana. …

Republican Senate aides said that the group of senators, led by Johnny Isakson of Georgia, does not see any reason to continue the meetings because there is not enough common ground. One aide said the major sticking point was a refusal by the Obama administration to consider a larger deal that included cuts to entitlement programs such as Medicare. …

[Paladin2]

The only surprise is that the GOPe isn’t waving a copy of a signed deal like that between Chamberlain and Hitler, yet.

[cripplecreek]

Cruise missile strikes imminent.

[b4its2late]

Budget? I thought all we’ve had the last 5 years are continuing resolutions?

[Joe Boucher]

Wag that dog obammy wag that dog you pos.

[silverleaf]

obama already said he wan’t going to negotiate any cuts, nah heck no

all spending

gimme or the govt will be shutdown

next week he’ll be in his big black made-in-canada bus telling senior citizens on the nightly news that the GOP is gonna stop their checks

[G Larry]

Good!

We don’t need to cave to Obama’s “take it or leave it” approach to “negotiating”.

[norwaypinesavage]

One interesting part of this is that Obama has reported NO increase in the debt since May. He has achieved this by shifting line item payments around, essentially borrowing from critical programs to fund the debt, and spending freely in his pet programs. This means that when the debt ceiling finally hits, he will make dramatic funding cuts to programs that are deemed important to the public. Of course, he will blame the Tea Party Republicans for these "Draconian Cuts to women, children, and the poor".

This has flown by, mostly under the radar. Some have noted the unexplained halt in the debt increase, but rarely is the motive noted.

[Cheerio]

“Negotiating” with a RAT is a ONE-WAY street - it is my way or the highway. Think Boner has learned that, or should I say I HOPE Boner has learned that.

[ncalburt]

I thought k street bagman bonehead was not going to negotiate with the our Muslim Marist brotherhood dictator anymore ?

[Olog-hai]

Marxist, I take it? because something tells me that Obama is very not likely to be Marist.

[ogen hal]

Why do the pols alway want medicare cuts...and not medicaid? Oh...how careless of me. I forgot about the new leftist god: redistribution of wealth.