Boehner Puts Kibosh on Camp David
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is unlikely to accept any invites to Camp David for weekend talks on the debt limit, his office said.
“The Speaker has told the White House he sees no need to go to Camp David this weekend,” a Boehner spokesman said.
President Barack Obama has been considering calling Congressional leaders to Camp David this weekend if he is not satisfied with the group’s progress on a deficit reduction deal, two Hill sources confirmed.
The possibility of the weekend negotiations comes on the heels of a Wednesday meeting that ended on a tense note with a heated exchange between Obama and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and an announcement from Moody’s Investors Service that it is mulling a downgrade of the U.S. government’s credit rating.
According to multiple sources, Obama told lawmakers that they had until Friday to come up with some sort of framework for a deal to prove to the markets and the American people that they were serious about an Aug. 2 deadline to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.
“We have to decide by Friday which direction we’re going. … We all need to think about things we can do instead of things we can’t,” Obama said, according to Cantor, who talked to reporters upon returning to the Capitol after Wednesday’s meeting, which lasted nearly two hours.
Bloomberg News first reported the potential of a Camp David session Thursday morning.