Deficit Talks End With No Deal

By George E. Condon Jr.

Updated: July 11, 2011 | 9:26 a.m.
July 10, 2011 | 8:16 p.m.

From left, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio), President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid (D-N.V.) meet in the Cabinet Room of the White House on July 10, 2011. (Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)

There was no Sunday night breakthrough on the debt talks. An unusual weekend session between President Obama and congressional leaders of both parties broke up at 7:30 p.m., after only 75 minutes of discussion in the Cabinet Room and with no sign of a break in the impasse.

Neither the White House nor the Republican leaders offered any immediate comment on the Sunday session. The talks will resume at the White House on Monday and the president will host an 11 a.m. news conference on the efforts.

They will do so without some of the anticipation that built last week when the president pushed hard for what many called “a grand bargain” that would do far more than simply raise the debt limit before the Aug. 2 deadline.

The bigger deal sought by the president would have produced $4 trillion in spending cuts, taken the first step toward tax reform and begun reining in entitlement spending.

But House Speaker John Boehner Saturday bowed to the will of his conservative caucus and ruled out anything that grand, blaming Democratic demands for tax increases and urging that the two sides adopt the more modest spending cuts outlined in the talks that Vice President Joe Biden had been leading in recent weeks.

The president signaled his sense of urgency when he replied to a reporter at the beginning of the talks who asked if a compromise could be worked out in the next ten days. “We need to,” responded the president.

In a sign that the president intends to keep the pressure on negotiators, the White House announced that the president will hold a press conference on Monday morning. He is expected to hit hard at his demand that any agreement must be "balanced" and include concessions from both sides. Additionally, he will again demand that neither side allow these talks to drag on to the point where the full faith and credit of the United States can be in doubt.

Get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox. Sign up for National Journal's morning alert, Wake-Up Call, and afternoon newsletter, The Edge. Subscribe here.