President Obama and GOP Leaders Set for New Budget Collision

“Malia and Sasha generally finish their homework a day ahead of time,” President Barack Obama said. “They don’t wait until the night before. They’re not pulling all-nighters.”

After the GOP’s budget negotiator, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, walked out of negotiations, it’s clear the president is headed for his third budget-related policy clash with congressional Republicans in the last seven months.

The first budget wreck was in December 2010, as Senate and House Republicans insisted on extending the Bush tax cuts. That unpaid-for legislation cost American taxpayers $800 billion overall, $300 billion of which was for tax cuts to 300,000 millionaire households. The second dust-up came in April 2011 as Obama, House Speaker John Boehner and Vice President Joe Biden came to an 11th-hour agreement to avert a government shutdown.

Many believe that the president got the better of the GOP in that negotiation and that several cuts announced by Republicans were not as severe as first thought. This time, however, several Democrats are worried the president will be the first to blink, as many feel he did back on December 2010.

He won’t have much time to prepare, as the next budget collision is coming soon. As Obama urges the GOP-controlled House to raise the debt ceiling, Boehner and Cantor push for up to $4 trillion in budget cuts to be attached to that vote.

“What he’s [President Obama] proposing will not pass,” says GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.  Nevermind that several Republican lawmakers now opposing the president voted in favor of the debt ceiling many times in the past.  Suddenly, a new and deeper line has been drawn in the sand.

“It’s hard to see how you get to $2 or $4 trillion in reductions without revenues or Draconian cuts that Democrats would not support,” House Whip Steny Hoyer said.

As Republicans continue to argue they will accept no tax cuts of any kind, not even on the top 1 percent of wage earners, a showdown is clearly on the horizon, and it appears that on the matter of the debt limit, Congress is about to pull an “all-nighter.”

Lauren Victoria Burke writes on Congress and politics from Capitol Hill in Washington DC. She is the creator of the blog Crewof42 on Black members of Congress. The blog was named one of the 30 Black Blogs You Should Know by The ROOT in 2011. Ms. Burke has worked on Capitol Hill, ABC News, USA TODAY.com, The Hill, The Washington Post and Associated Press. She can be heard every Tuesday at 4 p.m. on WMCS-AM 1290 in Milwaukee on THE EVENING RUSH with Earl Ingram and every Friday at 6:30 p.m. on WPFW-FM 89.3 in Washington DC on NEWS/VIEWS. She owns wdcpix.com photo service. Follow her on twitter at @crewof42.

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