I distinctly remember when Obama & McCain left the campaign to head to DC to motivate and guide their fellow knuckleheads in the first stimulus fiasco talks. If a recall Obama wasn't a leader then nor was he much help and certainly not presidential for a potential president. He pretty much showed me he wasn't up to the job then and he hasn't grown up since.President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of a stormy debt-limit meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday, a dramatic setback to the already shaky negotiations, according to GOP sources.“He shoved back and said ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ and walked out,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters in the Capitol after the meeting.
On a day when the Moody’s rating agency warned that American debt could be downgraded, the White House talks blew up amid a new round of sniping between Obama and Cantor, who are fast becoming bitter enemies.
When Cantor said the two sides were too far apart to get a deal that could pass the House by the Treasury Department’s Aug. 2 deadline — and that he would consider moving a short-term debt-limit increase alongside smaller spending cuts — Obama began to lecture him.
“Eric, don’t call my bluff,” the president said, warning Cantor that he would take his case “to the American people.” He told Cantor that no other president — not Ronald Reagan, the president said — would sit through such negotiations.
Democratic sources dispute Cantor’s version of Obama’s walk out, but all sides agree that the two had a blow up. The sources described Obama as “impassioned” but said he didn’t exactly storm out of the room.
“Cantor’s account of tonight’s meeting is completely overblown. For someone who knows how to walk out of a meeting, you’d think he’d know it when he saw it,” a Democratic aide said. “Cantor rudely interrupted the president three times to advocate for short-term debt ceiling increases while the president was wrapping the meeting. This is just more juvenile behavior from him and Boehner needs to rein him in, and let the grown-ups get to work. “
On exiting the room, Obama said that “this confirms the totality of what the American people already believe” about Washington, according to a Democratic official familiar with the negotiations, and that officials are “too focused on positioning and political posturing” to make difficult choices.
The latest and sharpest in a series of harsh exchanges between the two leaders heightened concern that markets could crash at any time amid fear of a reduction in the rating on once-ironclad U.S. debt.
Cantor accused the president and congressional Democrats of progressively low-balling, over the last several days, the savings that could be achieved from proposals discussed by Vice President Joe Biden’s working group on deficit reduction. Cantor warned that the group has not identified enough cuts to win House passage of a $2.5 trillion debt-limit increase — the size the president says is needed to get through the 2012 election, sources told POLITICO.
Obama told Cantor that he would either have to agree to tax increases or give up on his demand that the debt hike be matched dollar-to-dollar to the cuts — that is, $2.5 trillion in deficit-reduction over 10 years in exchange for a $2.5 trillion hike in the debt ceiling.
He said that the negotiators should return to the White House Thursday to discuss savings from health care programs, budget caps and options for raising revenue.
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58937.html#ixzz1S2UWwhpQRead more:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58937.html#ixzz1S2UPbIMk
