On ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew threatened that President Obama would veto any bill cutting domestic spending, and said Obama would not hold negotiations of any sort on the debt ceiling. “Congress can’t let us default,” Lew said. “Congress has to do its work… I certainly hope that Congress isn’t looking to create confrontations and false crises because we did see, in 2011, how bad that is for the American economy. The mere fact of negotiating over the debt limit, after 2011, would introduce this notion that somehow there’s a question about whether or not we’re going to pay our bills, whether or not we’re going to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”
Lew continued by saying that Congress might actually move in the other direction by replacing sequestration’s automatic spending cuts. He specifically cited Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ) as possible negotiators with the White House – he said they would be meeting with White House staff to discuss other spending options. On NBC’s Meet the Press, Lew said, “What the president said – and has written to Congress is – that they cannot fix the problems created by the across-the-board cuts– known as sequestration by cutting domestic priorities in order to fund defense. That’s unacceptable…He won’t sign that.”