On Tuesday, Obama Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said President Barack Obama refuses to compromise or negotiate on spending cuts in exchange for an agreement to raise the nation’s $16.7 trillion debt ceiling.
“The president will not negotiate conditions on the debt limit,” Lew told CNBC.
Obama’s refusal to comprise on the nation hitting the debt ceiling in October appears to be part of a broader Democratic strategy designed to back Republicans into a corner over a possible government shutdown in the lead up to the 2014 midterm elections.
As Breitbart News reported in May, top Democratic House Ways and Means Committee member Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI) said Democrats refuse to compromise or negotiate with Republicans.
“Democrats are unwilling to bargain on the debt ceiling,” said Levin.
Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said on Tuesday that the GOP is mounting up for a “whale of a fight” over the debt ceiling.
“I’ve made it clear that we’re not going to increase the debt limit without cuts and reforms that are greater than the increase in the debt limit,” The Hill quoted Boehner as saying. “The president doesn’t think this is fair, thinks I’m being difficult to deal with. But I’ll say this: It may be unfair but what I’m trying to do here is to leverage the political process to produce more change than what it would produce if left to its own devices. We’re going to have a whale of a fight.”
Boehner has already signaled that he wants to pass a short-term stopgap funding bill in September to avert a government shutdown.