Obama's Fiscal Policy: Bipartisan Hill Leaders Fire Warning Shots

A day before President Barack Obama is set to map out his long-term fiscal policy, Congressional leaders in both parties are already drawing lines in the sand over the types of cuts they won’t support.

Obama is hosting top House and Senate leaders at the White House on Wednesday morning to preview the major budget speech he plans to deliver later in the afternoon. Details on the speech are slim, but Obama is expected to focus on three core pieces of long-term fiscal reform: entitlements, tax expenditures and defense spending.

Lawmakers from both parties say they welcome the president’s attention to fiscal responsibility—as long as their priority issues remain untouched.

“Taxes are not on the table,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters Wednesday. "There's no way to tax our way out of this problem … We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he has “no problems” with taking on entitlement reform but warned Obama against touching Social Security, which he said has not contributed to the deficit.

“Leave Social Security alone,” Reid told reporters.

Reid and McConnell will be among those meeting with Obama before his speech, which is set for 1:30 at George Washington University. Others lawmakers in the meeting will include House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

Senior Democratic and Republican aides privately concurred that the meeting will be big on show and little on substance.

“With that many members in attendance, this is likely to be a photo-op so that [reporters] will write that we were briefed on the ‘plan,’” said a top GOP aide.

"Nothing will come out of the meeting," said a senior Democratic aide. "Bipartisan and bicameral means nothing happens."

And some Republicans bashed Obama’s speech before hearing it.

Cantor dubbed Obama’s remarks a “budget-do-over speech” and criticized the president’s plan to raise taxes on families and business owners.

“Not only is raising taxes the wrong move in the current economic environment, but it locks in the Democrats’ status-quo agenda to keep spending taxpayer dollars on duplicative big-government programs,” Cantor said.

“Furthermore, it’s the latest in a series of flip-flops from the president and an affront to the bipartisan tax deal that he negotiated with us this winter and has repeatedly credited for the economic uptick,” he said.

An administration official questioned how Republicans could attack Obama’s plan before even seeing it and called on lawmakers to address fiscal problems that have been put off for decades.

"The president ran a campaign promising to take on the tough challenges and tough choices that Washington has put off for too long," said the official. "Few issues fit that description better than our nation's fiscal policy."

Posted in: 112th Congress,Barack Obama,Eric Cantor,Fiscal Policy,Harry Reid,Mitch McConnell,Obama Tax Deal,President Barack,Social Security