White House official says Obama .....................
White House official says Obama would accept short-term agreement on debt ceiling
Video: "Nothing good" will come if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned, calling on House Speaker John Boehner to "give the majority a chance to vote."
President Obama would accept a short-term increase in the federal borrowing cap , rather than one lasting a year or more, a senior White House official said Monday. The statement was an acknowledgment by the administration that it may not be possible to reach a deal on a long-term increase in the debt ceiling before a critical Oct. 17 deadline.
Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, said members of Congress ultimately have the responsibility to decide how often they want to raise the debt ceiling, although he argued that an extended hike is preferable.
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“I think longer is better for economic certainty and jobs, but it is ultimately up to them,” Sperling said in a morning discussion hosted by Politico.
The Treasury says it will run low on cash in as little as 10 days, placing the nation at risk of a historic default. Some Republicans have suggested that if Congress can’t reach an agreement by Oct. 17, they might try to forge a coalition to support an interim measure to increase the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling for as little as six weeks.
Sperling’s comments Monday suggested that the White House would accept such a measure. The statement was notable because administration officials had rejected a short-term debt ceiling increase during a similar impasse in the summer of 2011, when the White House insisted that the debt limit be increased to cover borrowing through 2012.
Now, with no election hanging over him, Obama has more flexibility. But it is not even clear whether Republicans would be able to pass a short-term bill. Aides to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) say no debt-ceiling measure can pass the House without additional policy concessions by the Democrats.
Boehner made a similar point on Sunday in a defiant television interview, when he warned that the nation was on a path to default without concessions by Obama.
On Monday, Sperling and Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said they were disappointed by Boehner’s comments. Boehner, they said, was welcome to pass the debt ceiling increase in a way that gives him a “talking point.” But they reiterated that Obama would not be negotiating policy changes as part of deciding how the nation should pay for spending that Congress has already committed to and approved.
“He’s not going to sanction negotiations with any faction that are using the threat of default as a way of enacting policy in our democracy,” Sperling said. “The era of threatening default has to be over.”
“The president strongly believes that if he were to sanction negotiating with those threatening to default,” Sperling added, “that would increase, not decrease, the chances that we as a country would undermine” the nation’s creditworthiness.
Furman said that a default would be “terrible” for the country. He noted that early this year, Boehner supported suspending the debt ceiling for several months and said he hoped that the speaker would take a similar step this time.
“He defused that brinksmanship,” Furman said. “He has it within his power to do that” again. WP.politics
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