House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and President Obama will meet at the White House on Friday morning, according to a Democratic source.
Meanwhile, Pelosi told Bloomberg TV that the country would reach a deal on raising the debt limit before the Aug. 2 deadline set by Treasury officials.
“With all due respect to Greece, we are not Greece,” Pelosi said, referring to the recent financial crisis that engulfed that country.
“I believe, respecting our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, that everybody knows that the full faith and credit of the United States of America must be respected by the Congress of the United States. I have faith and confidence this will happen.”
Regarding the Pelosi-Obama meeting, the source, who has not authorized to speak publicly regarding the meeting, said the session had been scheduled before Obama invited eight bipartisan congressional leaders, including Pelosi, to meet at the White House on Thursday to discuss how to restart talks on a deal to raise the nation’s debt limit.
Obama has held one-on-one meetings with other top lawmakers this week, including House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Sunday and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday.
The meeting with Pelosi is scheduled for 10 a.m. One issue likely to come up is entitlement reform. Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security as part of a sweeping debt-limit deal, people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal said Wednesday.
Pelosi told Bloomberg that Social Security reform should be considered on a “separate table.”
“If there are suggestions that people have for strengthening Social Security, let’s pour it back into Social Security if there are some good ideas to that effect. But we should not do that in order to subsidize tax cuts for the wealthiest people in our country. We have been clear about that from the standpoint of our House Democratic caucus over a long period of time.”
Pelosi said that she did not think anyone was “drawing lines in the sand” that might subvert a “grand bargain” on a debt limit deal between Congress and the White House.
“Understand though that our priority is no benefit cuts to Social Security or Medicare. I do not know if you can save money doing that. Are you reducing the deficit? We have to examine every piece of revenue we have.”
On Thursday, Pelosi and other House Democratic leaders expressed alarm at the proposal.
“We are not going to balance the budget on the backs of seniors, women and people with disabilities,” Pelosi said at a news conference at the Capitol.
Read more at PostPolitics
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