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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Soul Crusher on July 22, 2011, 07:54:38 PM
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How the Negotiations Broke Down--The White House View (Boehner ignored two Obama phone calls)
ABC News ^ | Friday, July 22, 2011 | David Kerley
Posted on July 22, 2011 9:36:44 PM EDT by kristinn
White House officials thought, just hours ago, that they were “very close” to a deal with Republican House Speaker John Boehner. But all of the sudden, the speaker wasn’t returning the president’s phone calls.
“If Speaker Boehner had called back, Americans would have had a deal,” a White House official told reporters after the president announced Boehner had pulled out of negotiations.
These officials said there were “many zones of agreement,” and that cuts to entitlement programs, other than a small disagreement over Medicaid, were “settled.”
The White House said congressional staffers were still calling today to negotiate details, but the speaker was not talking to the president.
On Thursday afternoon, Obama talked with the speaker. The president called again in the evening. That call was not returned.
The White House said the speaker’s office emailed at 3:30 p.m. Friday and said the speaker would call at 5:30 p.m. The president’s office called immediately and asked to talk to the speaker. Boehner did not come to the phone, but did call 5:30 p.m., telling the president he could not continue to negotiate.
According to the White House officials, there were only three major outstanding issues -- the president asking for $400 billion in additional revenue over 10 years, how deep cuts in Medicaid would be, and the speaker’s request that the individual mandate in the health care reform law be eliminated if the government could not approve all elements of the deal.
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