Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama was meeting behind closed doors with congressional Democrats Thursday to discuss ongoing deficit reduction negotiations and the looming deadline to raise the federal government's debt ceiling.
The president has challenged a controversial GOP proposal to overhaul Medicare, but told congressional Republicans on Wednesday that entitlement reforms are under discussion as part of a deficit reduction deal.
In Thursday's meetings, the House Democrats were expected to push for a tax increase on high-income Americans as part of any deficit reduction agreement, according to two House Democratic aides who spoke on condition of not being identified.
Other messages planned for Obama included a focus on job creation in addition to deficit reduction, especially in light of continuing high unemployment, and opposition to the Republican proposal on reforming Medicare, the two aides said.
One of the House Democratic aides told CNN that Rep. Kathy Hochul of New York, who was sworn in Wednesday as the chamber's newest Democratic member after winning a special election last week in a traditionally Republican district, will express at the meeting how the GOP Medicare proposal was a major issue in that race.
The meetings this week come amid deficit reduction negotiations led by Vice President Joe Biden and the need for congressional approval to increase the federal debt limit by early August, a move that Republicans oppose without significant spending cuts and other debt reduction steps.
While both sides say the negotiations have made progress, they remain far apart on key issues such as tax reform and how to reduce the rising costs of entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters before Obama met with the House Democrats that the president believes the Biden-led negotiations are making progress and an agreement could be reached in coming weeks.
Carney rejected Republican calls for Obama to now propose a 2012 federal budget that would then go through the normal congressional committee process, saying the president's priorities are clear and the deficit reduction negotiations are the "best vehicle" to move the process forward. Obama already proposed a budget plan for next fiscal year that was rejected by the Senate, and he outlined his budget and deficit reduction priorities in an April 13 speech.
"We're at a point now where we don't need new plans," Carney said. "We need common ground on a shared goal of deficit reduction."
The negotiations are looking at all components of federal spending -- non-military discretionary spending, military spending, obligations under Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and tax revenues and expenditures, Carney said.
He reiterated that negotiators won't reach agreement on all the substantive issues on which Democrats and Republicans disagree, but said Obama believes enough common ground exists to bring significant deficit reduction steps. At the same time, Carney said, Congress must agree to raise the debt ceiling, repeating past assertions that the spending negotiations and debt ceiling issues should not be linked.
On Wednesday, Obama met for 75 minutes with House Republicans a day after the GOP-controlled House overwhelmingly rejected a measure to raise the national debt ceiling without any accompanying deficit- or spending-reduction provisions.
Republican sources in the meeting said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, the initiator of a budget proposal that includes the Medicare overhaul plan, called on Obama to show more leadership on the issue.
The sources said Ryan, R-Wisconsin, urged Obama to stop playing politics with Medicare reforms, saying leaders can either solve problems "or exacerbate them." Ryan also said Obama appeared more focused on winning the 2012 election than solving the nation's problems, according to the sources. After he spoke, his fellow Republicans in the room gave him a standing ovation, the sources said.
Ryan told reporters that he explained the plan to Obama so that the president and Democrats would stop mischaracterizing it to the public.
Republican Rep. David Dreier of California, who attended the meeting, told reporters the discussion between Ryan and Obama "was very friendly and respectful," adding that other GOP members also spoke and "there was strength shown on both sides."
Dreier also said Obama told the House Republicans after Ryan spoke that "entitlements are on the table."
Carney said Wednesday that the president's meeting with House Republicans reached no agreements and wasn't designed to, but instead provided Obama and House Republicans a chance to privately discuss the key issues facing them.
One key unresolved issue is the GOP proposal to overhaul the government-run Medicare program that provides health care for senior citizens. The proposal, which would increase the health care costs of senior citizens starting in 2022, has prompted public opposition and, last week, helped Hochul win election.
Republicans complain that Democrats erroneously say the Ryan plan would mean senior citizens would be forced into the private health insurance market and receive a government payment to cover some of the costs. Republicans contend the plan sets up a Medicare exchange offering specific options for private coverage, with the government helping to pay the bill.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said the Ryan proposal would increase the average health care costs for senior citizens by $6,000 a year.
Carney on Wednesday continued to call the Ryan proposal an effort to end the Medicare system as it now exists. He also directly linked the unpopular GOP Medicare proposal with another issue pushed by Obama's Democratic base: Ending tax cuts for the wealthy.
"In order to achieve the (spending) reductions that they seek and pay for the tax cuts that aren't called for, they need to do things to Medicare that aren't necessary," Carney said, calling the debate "a question of priorities."
The House voted 318-97 Tuesday to defeat a measure that would have raised the federal government's debt limit by approximately $2.4 trillion. Republican opposition was unanimous.
GOP leaders scheduled the vote to show that any attempt to divorce an increase in the debt ceiling from spending reduction efforts -- a move initially favored by the Obama White House -- cannot win congressional approval.
Democrats called Tuesday's vote a dangerous political stunt that risked rattling financial markets. The New York Stock Exchange recorded its biggest loss so far in 2011 on Wednesday, though analysts attributed the showing to other issues including Greece's debt problems and tepid U.S. economic reports.
The federal government hit its current debt ceiling limit of roughly $14.3 trillion on May 16. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has indicated he can keep the country out of default until August 2, but warned of potentially devastating financial consequences after that point.
Numerous analysts say that a failure to reach an agreement raising the debt limit could lead to skyrocketing interest rates, a plummeting dollar and a higher cost of living for most Americans.
GOP leaders, who campaigned in 2010 on an agenda of fiscal responsibility, oppose any increase in the debt ceiling without major spending cuts.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, made clear after Wednesday's White House meeting that his majority caucus wants the government to cut more spending than the amount it needs to raise its borrowing limit to pay all obligations.
"This morning I released a letter signed by 150 economists who agreed that if we're going to get serious creating jobs in America, we've got to reduce some of the uncertainty," Boehner told reporters. "Some of that uncertainty's caused by the giant debt that's facing our country. And the fact that if we're going to raise the debt limit, the spending cuts should exceed the increase in the debt limit. Otherwise it'll serve to cost us jobs in our country."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, has said that any vote in favor of raising the ceiling should be accompanied by significant new cuts in discretionary spending over the next two years, followed by significant changes over the longer term to costly entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.
The question of how to control the explosive growth in popular entitlements may be the most critical question in the current debate over Washington's fiscal health. Leaders from both parties agree that some kind of change is necessary in Medicare in particular, but differ sharply on scope and shape.
Democrats are pushing for tax increases on higher-income Americans as a way to reduce the need for sharp cuts. They have ripped their GOP counterparts for allegedly taking advantage of the current crisis to try to dismantle a social safety net in place since President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.
Under Ryan's plan, which aims to cut federal deficits by roughly $4.4 trillion over the next decade, Medicare would be overhauled starting in 2022. The government would no longer directly pay bills for senior citizens in the program. Instead, recipients would choose a plan from a list of private providers, which the federal government would subsidize.
While individuals currently over the age of 55 would not be affected by the changes, numerous political strategists believe the proposal will prove to be deeply unpopular among seniors.
According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday, 58% of the public opposes the Republican plan on Medicare, while 35% say they support the proposal.
Last year, GOP leaders repeatedly attacked the change to the health care law pushed through by Democrats, arguing that it would weaken Medicare. Republican congressional candidates crushed their Democratic counterparts among voters age 65 and older in the November congressional elections, carrying seniors by a 21-point margin.
CNN's Kate Bolduan, Ed Henry, Brianna Keilar and Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.
Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/x_s--PDPlno/index.html
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