Debt ceiling debate: Opposition to deal with Obama creates problems for GOP
As the debt ceiling debate enters its final stages, House Republicans face increasing political isolation in their opposition to sweeping budget reforms that President Obama has pushed for and polls show most Americans now prefer.
Republican resistance to compromise has turned a significant bloc of voters against them, according to several new polls, and has frustrated members of their own leadership as well as establishment GOP figures.
The fear among leading Republicans is that the party may lose an opportunity to lock in budget cuts that go beyond anything Democrats had previously been willing to consider. Five-term Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said he had never seen any spending reductions attached to a debt ceiling vote.
“It’s inconceivable,” Cole said. “Some of the members who haven’t been here don’t appreciate how much John Boehner has gotten for them.”
Boehner, an Ohio Republican and the House speaker, is leading an effort to try to prepare his restive House Republicans for a vote to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.
Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate have begun lining up behind a plan, offered by a bipartisan group known as the “Gang of Six,” to reduce the long-term deficit by nearly $4 trillion over the next decade. That plan would include about $1.2 trillion in additional tax revenues over the 10-year period that House Republicans have so far resisted.