WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders and the Obama administration aired proposals designed to steer around a risky confrontation over the federal budget and lead to a political compromise in coming weeks.
The moves came Thursday as talks opened between Vice President Joe Biden and congressional leaders over how to shrink the deficit. But those talks were quickly overshadowed by statements from Republican leaders publicly conceding a political reality — that their far-reaching plan to eventually privatize Medicare is not moving forward any time soon.
“I have not taken Medicare off the table, but the president has,” Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the majority leader, told reporters after the meeting with Biden. “The reality is this president has excoriated our budget plan and the Medicare proposal.”
Instead of such an ambitious plan, congressional Republicans are pressing for a series of steep but less dramatic spending cuts as their top deficit-reduction strategy. Both sides also talked of making a commitment to long-term budget reductions that would be enforced by so-called “trigger” mechanisms that could automatically impose deficit reductions if Congress fails to act in years to come.
Such mechanisms would postpone many of the most difficult budget decisions until after the next election.
Before Congress went on its mid-April recess, the two sides had appeared to be heading toward a showdown over the budget and the federal government’s borrowing limit. Thursday’s comments indicated a shift. They came against a political background that has changed substantially in the intervening weeks — a president strengthened by rising poll numbers, and Republicans who were pummeled by angry voters at town-hall meetings and targeted in Democratic ads during the recess that accused them of seeking to destroy Medicare.
Both sides expect weeks of hard bargaining and political theatrics between now and an eventual vote to raise the federal government’s borrowing limit — something Congress will have to face before the end of July.
Deep divisions remain over tax hikes and spending cuts, and both parties have internal divisions over how much to compromise. But the two sides agreed to meet again early next week in a sign of the seriousness of the effort to rein in deficit spending as part of an agreement to lift the legal debt limit beyond $14.3 trillion.
“We had a good, productive first meeting today,” Biden said.
The latest proposals were not formally presented at Thursday’s session, which officials described as a meeting to review starting points for discussion. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, insisted that the Republican budget plan that passed last month, with its deep domestic spending cuts and Medicare changes, remains the party’s opening position.
