The two fundraisers were organized by the Democratic National Committee. Vice President Joe Biden will appear in the president’s stead at the fundraiser at the St. Regis Hotel, while the other event, which would have taken place at a private residence, has been canceled.
President Obama raised $86 million in the second quarter for his presidential re-election bid in 2012. However, with little more than a week to go before the Aug. 2, Treasury deadline and a bipartisan debt deal nowhere in sight, the president has temporarily put many of his fundraising events on hold.
In addition to canceling his Monday night appearances at the two fundraising events in Washington, campaign events in California and Seattle, and Washington have also been temporarily put on hold. Obama announced he would address the nation at 9 p.m. Monday night.
An event that was to take place at the New York home of movie producer Harvey Weinstein (“Shakespeare in Love,” “The Gangs of New York”) has been postponed until August, and an Aug. 3 event in Chicago taking place ahead of the president’s 50th birthday has also been suspended for the time being.
House and Senate Diverge on Debt
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the two chambers of Congress appeared to be pursuing divergent debt-reduction plans after negotiations collapsed over the weekend. If the budget debate continues on this trajectory, the two plans would have to be passed by their respective houses, merged by a joint committee, passed once again by both chambers, and signed by the president. This would be rather difficult to achieve ahead of the Treasury’s Aug. 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) unveiled his own debt-reduction plan today, which contains $2.7 trillion in cuts over the next decade and a debt-ceiling increase that would last through 2012.
Conspicuously, the plan also contained no changes to Social Security and Medicare, the entitlement programs that Republicans consider to be the main driver of the nation’s ballooning federal deficit. Democrats consider the Bush tax cuts and the wars to be the primary causes of the deficits. Among the proposed savings would be $1.2 trillion worth of cuts in discretionary spending, $1 trillion of which would be defense spending cuts derived from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaking in a news conference on Monday, Reid called Republicans out for their intransigence on cutting defense, while insisting that the military bear a share of the budget-cutting sacrifice.
“We are spending, this year, for the military, $700 billion dollars. That’s more money for the military than all the rest of the countries put together. So you would think in this debate that we have, that the Pentagon could chip in a few bucks, cut some spending. Secretary Gates thinks they can,” said Reid, referring to recently departed former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. “But over the weekend, lo and behold, [the Republicans] want more money for the Pentagon.”
Reid’s plan appeared to gain a tepid endorsement from the White House. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said on Monday that Reid’s plan is “a reasonable approach that should receive the support of both parties,” and that it “has put forward a responsible compromise that cuts spending in a way that protects critical investments and does not harm the economic recovery.”
Reid touted his plan as a bipartisan strategy that he believed Republicans could agree to, given that it forgoes tax increases and gives up more in spending cuts than the amount by which the debt ceiling will be raised.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is pursuing a somewhat different strategy, one that contains an immediate short-term, $1 trillion increase in the debt ceiling that will come up against another vote by the end of this year. According to Boehner, who spoke in a separate news conference on Monday, the plan will be built upon the principles of the failed “Cut, Cap, and Balance” legislation.
“Republicans have put forward a responsible, common sense proposal that meets our obligations to the American people and preserves the full faith and credit of the United States,” said Boehner. “This plan is far from perfect, but it adheres to our principles of ensuring that spending cuts are greater than any debt hike and it includes no tax increases. Importantly, it reflects the principles of ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance.’”
The plan would create a special joint House-Senate committee that would comprise an even mix of Democrats and Republicans, which will be tasked with finding an additional $1.8 trillion in spending cuts. Congress would subsequently give an up-or-down vote on the committee’s legislation, after which the president would be allowed to request a $1.6 trillion debt ceiling increase.
In addition, Boehner’s plan immediately cuts $1.2 trillion from the federal budget over the next decade, proposes caps on discretionary spending, and provides an automatic mechanism for adjusting spending if those caps are breached.
Also included in the Republican plan is a proposal for both the House and the Senate to vote on a balanced-budget amendment sometime after Oct. 1, but before the end of the year.
