Obama Sidesteps GOP Leaders To Revive Sequester Talks

The New York Times

WASHINGTON — With Republican leaders in Congress forswearing budget negotiations over new revenues, President Obama has begun reaching around them to Republican lawmakers with a history of willingness to cut bipartisan deals.

Mr. Obama has invited about a dozen Republican senators out to dinner on Wednesday night, after speaking with several of them by phone in recent days, according to people familiar with the invitation. And next week, according to those people and others who did not want to be identified, he will make a rare foray to Capitol Hill to meet separately with the Republican and Democratic caucuses in both the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House.

Since the weekend, the president has called at least a half-dozen Republican lawmakers, mostly senators, in a bid to revive talks toward a long-term deficit-reduction agreement and to press for action on other issues, includingimmigration, gun safety and climate measures. His calls began after indiscriminate government spending cuts — known as sequestration — took effect on Saturday because Republican leaders and Mr. Obama could not agree on alternative measures.

“Maybe because of sequestration and frustration with the public, the time is right to act, and what I see from the president is probably the most encouraging engagement on a big issue since the early days of his presidency,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who received a call from Mr. Obama on Tuesday.

Speaking of the deficit reduction impasse, Mr. Graham added, “He wants to do the big deal.”

Mr. Obama’s call to Mr. Graham followed other conversations with Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Rob Portman of Ohio and Bob Corker of Tennessee, all Republicans. Mr. Corker called his conversation with the president “constructive.”

Mr. Portman, while reluctant to detail private talks, was also positive, saying: “I think there’s a window of opportunity between now and the end of the summer. This is the last best chance.”

Yet such expressions of hope are increasingly scarce in Washington. While Mr. Graham said he and Mr. Obama agreed that a comprehensive deal could be reached to both slow the growth of the entitlement programs like Medicare and raise revenues by curbing costly tax breaks, that optimism is not the prevailing sentiment. Proponents in both parties have all but given up on a grand bargain in view of the chasm between Mr. Obama, who insists that revenues be part of the equation, and Republican leaders, who are just as adamant against raising taxes further.

Indeed, Mr. Obama’s calls reflect a sense of urgency within the White House to find a way to keep alive the prospects for a deal on revenues and entitlement spending — or, failing that, to at least appear to be doing so.

Administration officials take Speaker John A. Boehner and the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, at their word that they will not cut any revenue deals with Mr. Obama given the two men’s separate political pressures — Mr. Boehner would lose his leadership post, Republicans say, and Mr. McConnell could draw a conservative opponent in his re-election race next year.

With sequestration in place, the two sides now have agreed over two years to nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction through 2023, with about 80 percent from spending cuts and the rest from higher taxes on the wealthy. Virtually no savings come from Medicare,Medicaid and Social Security, the entitlement programs whose growth is driving projections of unsustainable debt as the population ages and medical costs increase. And revenues are insufficient to support the size of government.

As a consequence, the legacy-minded president is forcing himself to do something he has largely avoided or left to senior advisers — personally reaching out to rank-and-file members of Congress. The call to Mr. Graham, for example, was partly in response to his televised comment that he would be willing to raise $600 billion more in revenue over 10 years if Democrats agreed to reduce entitlement spending — just the offer Mr. Obama has been making.

Senior aides also opened a channel with Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri and a member of his party’s leadership. Senate aides familiar with the talks say Mr. Obama is telling senators that he wants to convene bipartisan discussions at the White House, a departure from the more typical meetings between him and party leaders.

“The president is engaging with lawmakers of both parties and will continue to do so,” said the White House press secretary, Jay Carney. Repeating a phrase the president first used recently, Mr. Carney said the outreach was the president’s way of “finding the members of the caucus of common sense and working with them to bring about a resolution to this challenge.”

Dissatisfaction with Mr. Obama’s attentions to Capitol Hill, however, has been longstanding and bipartisan. Democrats complain that the president has done little to use the trappings of office to woo opponents or reward friends. Republicans say they rarely hear even from the White House aides tasked to reach out to Congress.

One senior Democratic Congressional aide said the president seemed to view relations with lawmakers “as a chore, not an opportunity.”

But another expressed sympathy with the White House view that many Republicans see political risk in appearing too friendly with Mr. Obama, adding: “If he invited people up and nothing came of it, then he looks like a failure. He’s trying to find effective ways to reach out.”  

This article is from The New York Times.