Emerging from what he described as "a very constructive meeting" with congressional leaders, President Obama on Thursday said his staff and theirs will be working through the weekend to come up with a budget compromise "so the full faith and credit of the United States is not impaired."
In a hastily scheduled statement at the White House briefing room, Obama said the bipartisan group agreed that a deal to raise the debt ceiling must be reached soon. "Everybody acknowledged that we have to get this done before the hard deadline of Aug. 2," he said. And he said there also consensus that "there is going to be pain involved politically."
Obama said he and congressional leaders plan to reconvene Sunday "with the expectation that at that point the parties will at least know where each others' bottom lines are.
"Nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to," the president said, in an apparent reference to reports of partial deals. "The parties are still far apart on a wide range of issues."
But he added the meeting demonstrated "a spirit of compromise."
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