UPDATE: House Republicans addressed reporters on the White House lawn following their meeting this morning with President Obama. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) called the meeting “productive,” and said that members of his party urged Obama to approve a number of spending cuts that would match the amount of new borrowing authorized within a vote to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.
However, other lawmakers said that Obama seemed unwilling to meet their demand of no new tax increases. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) laughed and said “no” when asked by The Hill newspaper whether the President expressed any interest in agreeing to the GOP’s tax reform plan, which would simply lower rates on large businesses and top-earning individuals. Instead, Cantor said that Obama encouraged lawmakers to support more spending initiatives.
“The President talked about a need for us to continue to “invest” from Washington’s standpoint. And to a lot of us, that’s code for more Washington spending, something that we can’t afford right now.”
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said that he told the President to resist the urge to “demagogue” his budget plan, which includes overhauls of Medicare and Medicaid.
“I simply explained what our plan is, how it works. It’s been misdescribed by the President and many others. And so we simply described to him precisely what it is we’ve been proposing, so that he hears from us how our proposal works so that in the future he won’t mischaracterize it.”
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) said that the President failed to offer Republicans a plan of his own to reduce the debt.
“Unfortunately, what we did not hear from the President, is a specific plan of his to deal with the debt crisis that could actually be scored by the Congressional Budget Office.”
WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the rest of the House Republican Conference will caravan up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House Wednesday to meet with President Obama to press for steep spending cuts to complement a debt limit increase.
Boehner will present Obama with a statement signed by 150 economists from across the country who have backed his call for cuts that exceed any increase in the debt limit.
“More than 150 economists have a simple message for Washington,” Boehner said in a statement. “To help our economy grow and create jobs, any debt limit increase needs to be met with even larger spending cuts.”
Among those who signed the statement are Nobel Prize winner Robert Mundell, former Secretary of States George Schultz and former CBO Directors Douglas Holtz-Eakin and June O’Neill.
“It is critical that any debt limit legislation enacted by Congress include spending cuts and reforms that are greater than the accompanying increase in debt authority being granted to the president,” the statement reads.
The visit to the White House comes after the House voted Tuesday against rising the debt limit in a “clean” bill, a move Democrats previously pushed for. The bill failed and was said to have been used as an example by Republicans to reveal the improbability of raising the debt limit sans spending cuts.
On Thursday, House Democrats will make a trip of their own to the White House to offer their vision of what a debt limit deal would look like.
This story was updated at 11:55 am.