Four days into the government shutdown that was caused by the inability of Congress to pass a funding bill House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has turned his attention from the budget impasse to a more pressing matter; the debt ceiling that will force the United States to default on its loans if it is not raised by mid-October, according to the Los Angeles Times.
It has become evident that Boehner can't muster the support among his own party to pass a bill that will fund the government and unwilling to anger the far-right within his party by reaching across the aisle to work with Democrats he has turned his focus to crafting a debt limit bill that will be palatable to both parties. By agreeing to raise the debt limit Boehner is hoping to convince Democrats to agree to scale back the size of the federal government, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"The speaker's trying to get to a broad budget deal," Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., said. "Obamacare's just part of it. We're going to try to get what we can, but we understand that's the president's legacy. The bigger problem facing the country, in my mind, is the debt, and the fact that we have entitlement programs that are still growing without end in sight. And we need tax reform."
If a deal is not met and the debt ceiling is not raised it could be "catastrophic" for the economy, a report from the Treasury Department warned.
"A default would be unprecedented and has the potential to be catastrophic: credit markets could freeze, the value of the dollar could plummet, U.S. interest rates could skyrocket, the negative spillovers could reverberate around the world, and there might be a financial crisis and recession that could echo the events of 2008 or worse," the report said.
Boehner met with 20 of his closest GOP allies on Thursday to come up with a plan to create a large-scale budget deal. Sources told Politico that defunding the Affordable Care Act will be "part" of any budget created by the Republicans but it will not be centerpiece, instead they will focus on curtailing entitlements and attempting to rewrite the tax code.
