The Price of Politics by Bob Woodward

Author:Bob Woodward
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781451651126
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2012-09-11T07:00:00+00:00

25

Obama’s exchange with Cantor at the previous day’s meeting sent an angry Harry Reid to the Senate floor on the morning of Thursday, July 14.

“With so much at stake, even Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell seem to understand the seriousness of this situation.163 They are willing to negotiate in good faith, which I appreciate and the country appreciates.

“Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has shown that he shouldn’t even be at the table, and Republicans agree that he shouldn’t be at the table.”

He went on to call Cantor’s departure from the Biden talks the previous month “childish.”

• • •

Boehner was sick of the White House meetings. It was still mostly the president lecturing, he reported to his senior staff. The other annoying factor was Jack Lew, who tried to explain why the Democrats’ view of the world was right and the Republicans’ wrong.

“Always trying to protect the sacred cows of the left,” Barry Jackson said of Lew, going through Medicare and Medicaid almost line by line while Boehner was just trying to reach some top-line agreement.

• • •

Boehner wasn’t quite sure, but it didn’t seem like Cantor was on his side.

The confrontation with Obama and Reid’s criticism of the majority leader on the Senate floor focused a lot of negative media attention on Cantor, and that gave Boehner an opening.

At a news conference in the Capitol, reporters were hitting Cantor hard on his position on the debt limit talks. They were pounding the hell out of him, Boehner later recalled. “I just went up and put my arm around Eric and made it clear, listen, we’re on the same team.”164

Boehner then said to the reporters, “Let me just say, we have been in this fight together, and any suggestion that the role that Eric has played in this meeting has been anything less than helpful is just wrong.”165

Afterward, when Boehner and Cantor were waiting together to get on an elevator, Cantor indicated he had needed that vote of confidence.166 “Thank you very much,” he said.

• • •

That day’s White House meeting was scheduled for late afternoon in the Cabinet Room. Before it got under way, Pelosi and Hoyer spoke briefly with Boehner.

“Look,” Hoyer, a fiscal conservative, said quietly, “if you can get this nailed down, we’re going to be there.” He didn’t promise any votes but Boehner assumed it meant he wanted a deal.

Even Pelosi indicated to the speaker that they were counting on him to pull this off.

Boehner interpreted this to mean that the House Democratic leaders were not confident in the president’s ability to negotiate a deal and avoid default.

• • •

“Last meeting for this week,” Obama said. “We could potentially get to $2 trillion or more if we did not do revenue neutral.” He was sticking it to Cantor, pointing out that it was the House majority leader’s insistence on revenue neutrality that was standing in the way of a deal securing $2 trillion in deficit reduction. “Standard & Poor’s is putting us on negative watch,” Obama added.

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