Free Republic

Speaker Boehner has announced he won't negotiate one on one with the president anymore. Obama has said repeatedly that he won't negotiate on raising the debt limit. The two sides are speeding toward each other waiting for the other guy to blink. ABC News: President Obama was pretty clear late on New Year's night as he reacted to Congress's passage of a bill to take a turn away from the fiscal cliff. He won't negotiate with Republicans about the debt ceiling. "Now, one last point I want to make," said the president, before wrapping up and hopping on Air Force...

This is a guest post by Senator Ima Librul (D., Utopia) on the fine art of growing pineapples. I am a Librul and justly proud of the great good we are doing for the entire World. This is my creed: it is irresponsible to be concerned about the future when our own leaders and our other experts tell us that only good things will happen if we do exactly as they say. The brightest and best, we are never wrong! Don't think. Don't question. Just follow our Dear Leader. My small garden had thirty pineapple plants. Twenty of them had...

It's official: U.S. debt will reach its legal borrowing limit on Monday, giving Congress about two months before it must raise the debt ceiling or risk causing the government to default on its bills and financial obligations. "I can confirm we will reach the statutory debt limit today, Dec. 31," a Treasury Department official said.

Despite Democrats' intransigent, no-way-no-how screeching about John Boehner's "Plan B," House Republican leaders are pressing forward with the option behind the scenes.  Those efforts received an important boost today when Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform released a statement affirming that the potential plan would not violate the group's oft-cited tax pledge:   ATR has consistently maintained that individual Members of Congress make a pledge to their constituents to oppose and vote against tax increases. The House this week will vote on a tax bill. This legislation—popularly known as “Plan B”--permanently prevents a tax increase on families making less than $1...

Welcome to Zimbabwe.  This is not a parody -- it is an actual report from the Washington Post:   Some economists and legal scholars have suggested that the “platinum coin option” is one way to defuse a crisis if Congress can’t or won’t lift the debt ceiling soon. At least in theory. The U.S. government is, after all, facing a real problem. The Treasury Department will hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit by next February at the latest. Unless Congress reaches an agreement to raise that borrowing limit, the government will no longer be able to borrow enough money...

<p>Fiscal Policy: The president tells business leaders he wants to do away with Congress when it comes to raising the country's legal debt limit and be able to do it all by himself.</p> <p>It was on display again Wednesday, when President Obama told CEOs at the Business Roundtable he is no longer playing the debt ceiling "game" of agreeing to raise the limit in exchange for administration concessions on spending and taxes.</p>

The House Democratic leadership said Wednesday that the debt ceiling “ought not be a negotiating item” in Congress, thereby ceding their constitutional authority to borrow money to President Barack Obama. “The debt limit ought not to be held hostage to anything,” said Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) during a press conference on Capitol Hill. “It hurt our economy. We were downgraded for the first time in my career, and I think in history, by one of the rating agencies. The creditworthiness of America ought not to be put at risk,” he said. “It ought not to be a negotiating item.”...

House Speaker John Boehner lashed out Friday at President Barack Obama, saying negotiations to avoid the "fiscal cliff" are "almost nowhere." Boehner spoke after Republicans disclosed that the White House was $1.6 trillion in tax increases up front, as well as $50 billion in additional stimulus spending. (Read More: Speaker Boehner Discusses 'Fiscal Cliff.') Boehner said the plan would be a "crippling blow" to an economy that is still struggling to find its footing. "There's a stalemate. Let's not kid ourselves," the Ohio Republican told reporters. "Right now, we're almost nowhere," Even so, he added, he was determined to continue...

Video at link (CNSNews.com) - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said on Friday that Congress should hand over to President Barack Obama personal, unilateral authority to increase the limit on the U.S. government's debt. At a Friday press conference, a reporter asked Pelosi if she agreed with a proposal made by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner that Congress give Obama the power to unilaterally increase the debt limit. "Yes," she said. When he met with members of Congress on Thursday to discuss a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff that is set to occur at the end of this year,...

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that House Republicans should stop negotiating with President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats on the fiscal cliff, saying that by doing so, they give Obama all of the leverage in the talks. “One of the things I would say to House Republicans is to get a grip,” Gingrich said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. “They are the majority. They’re not the minority,” he said, enunciating the words as if explaining the concept to someone who did not understand it. “They don’t need to...

The U.S. Treasury quietly warned at the end of a statement issued last Wednesday that it expects the federal government to hit its legal debt limit before the end of this year--which means before the new Congress is seated--and that "extraordinary measures" will be needed before then to keep the government fully funded into the early part of 2013. On Aug. 2, 2011, President Obama signed a deal he had negotiated with congressional leaders to increase the debt limit of the federal government by $2.4 trillion. But, now, after only 15 months, almost all of that additional borrowing authority has...

Speaking on CSPAN’s “Washington Journal” on Monday, Washington Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward said House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio) drank Merlot and smoked a cigarette and President Barack Obama drank iced tea and chewed Nicorette gum as the two met at the White House to negotiate increasing the federal government's debt limit. “They’re having these private meetings in the White House—what Boehner calls the Merlot and Nicorette meetings. Just a week before that, he goes down to the White House, and they have a meeting on the patio off the Oval Office, and as Boehner says and Obama confirmed when...

He’s been busy with more important stuff. He’ll get to it when he gets to it, even though (a) he signed a bill just last month setting today as the deadline, and (b) the whole idea of a defense sequester came from Democrats as a poison pill for the GOP in last year’s debt-ceiling deal. "One month ago, the PRESIDENT SIGNED the “Sequestration Transparency Act,” a law that IMPOSED UPON HIM a 30 day deadline to outline what Pentagon spending will be cut. That deadline was last night." "White House press secretary Jay Carney today said White House officials would...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has changed her public position on an issue that divided Democrats during the fight over raising the debt ceiling last summer. She now says that President Obama should use the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling by fiat — to preserve the country’s credit rating and avoid another economically harmful brinksmanship over the country’s borrowing limit. “I would like to see the constitution used to protect the country’s full faith and credit,” she told a handful of columnists at a roundtable. According to Matt Yglesias, “She didn’t offer a legal argument in favor of...

House Speaker John Boehner is playing a heroic role right now. In his efforts to prevent the Bush tax cuts from expiring, Boehner is aggressively taking on President Obama's leadership ineptitude on the economy. In essence, Boehner is pushing a Republican policy to wrap up a debt-limitation bill and extend the Bush tax cuts in one fell swoop before the election -- and before all the last-minute, crisis-oriented political machinations that would come in a lame-duck Congress, threatening another credit downgrade and leading to a business-hiring freeze and plunging stock market, all of which happened last year. Tax-cut certainty is...

WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner on Tuesday set the stage for a bruising election-year showdown on fiscal policy, vowing to hold up another increase in the federal debt ceiling unless it was offset by larger spending cuts. His combative comments came on the same day the Republicans’ presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, hit President Obama hard on his fiscal stewardship in a speech in Des Moines, suggesting that Mr. Romney and Congressional Republicans see an opening to attack the president on the mounting federal debt and the size of the government. Mr. Boehner’s stance threatened to throw Congress back into...

Notice: Free Republic has been in full rebellion mode since 2008 and will remain in full rebellion mode for the duration! No more Doles!! No more McCains!! No more RINOS!! NO ROMNEY!! Those who cannot stomach rebellion might as well start looking for a new home on the net!! Those who have ignored my hundreds of posts on this crucial issue or who have doubted me these last three or four years might as well get used to it. FR will never support the abortionist, homosexualist, socialist, mandate loving, constitution trampling liar Mitt Romney. In case you haven't noticed, a...

What happened? Obama and his advisers have cast the collapse of the talks as a republican failure. Boehner, unable to deliver, stepped away from the deal, simple as that. But interviews with most of the central players in those talks— some ofwhomwere granted anonymity to speak about the secret negotiations — as well as a review of meeting notes, e-mails and the negotiating proposals that changed hands, offer a more complicated picture of the collapse. Obama, nervous about how to defend the emerging agreement to his own democratic base, upped the ante in a way that made it more difficult...

Rep. Ron Paul will drop off the campaign trail in South Carolina on Wednesday and fly back to Washington to cast a vote against raising the debt ceiling, his campaign said Tuesday. ... Mr. Obama said late last month the federal government was once again close to breaching the legal limit on how much it can borrow, and he requested Congress raise the ceiling again. Opponents would need to pass a resolution disapproving of the increase and have it signed into law, or else override a presidential veto, to bloc the increase — which is highly unlikely. But returning to...

HONOLULU -- President Obama will hold off on asking Congress to raise the debt limit on Friday as the Treasury Department had originally intended, White House principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said. Listening to requests from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to have more time so that both houses can vote on a measure of disapproval. As part of the $1.2 trillion deal reached in August, both houses voted on a similar incremental increase in September. It passed in the House but fell in the Senate, and would need a two-thirds majority...