WASHINGTON, July 20 (UPI) -- President Barack Obama may sign a short-term, debt-limit extension if it is tied to a debt-reduction package that could be enacted soon, the White House said.
"If both sides agree to something significant, we will support the measures needed to finalize details," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a news briefing Wednesday, adding the caveat, "But there is no extension without an agreement on something big -- a firm, committed agreement on something big."
Obama met with congressional leaders at the White House Wednesday, one day after talking by phone with majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate. The president met late Wednesday with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., after an earlier meeting with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
Carney said Wednesday's meeting with Democratic leaders was to discuss "discuss approaches for further deficit reduction, balanced approach."
Support among Senate Republicans for a bipartisan plan was growing late Wednesday but there was no indication House Republicans were ready to accept the compromise, Politico reported.
Citing a Democratic political strategist it did not name, Politico said Democrats will "torch the House" with political heat to raise the federal debt limit before Aug. 2, which the administration says is when the Treasury Department will lose borrowing authority.
Several options are on the table, Carney said, calling them "a big deal," "a medium-size deal" and a "fail-safe fallback," each designed as part of an agreement to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling before Aug. 2.
Obama is pursuing a $4 trillion debt reduction achieved through budget cuts and new tax revenues, Carney said. He backed a plan being fashioned by a Senate panel known as the "Group of Six," which calls for about $3.7 trillion in debt reduction through new taxes and program cuts.
House Republicans, however, are adamant in their objections to higher taxes, saying they would slow job growth.
While Obama prefers the big plan, the White House doesn't want to abandon discussions on a "medium-size plan" that would be smaller in scope, Carney said.
Obama may consider signing a short-term deal being devised by Reid and McConnell, he said.
"We are, as you know, supportive of the efforts by Senators McConnell and Reid to craft a fall-back provision, solution, that ensures that we take the necessary action on raising the debt ceiling," he said. "[Right] now there are multiple trains heading toward the station. We have to decide. And some of them may continue up to the last moment, because we need to be sure that that fail-safe option is there, even as we pursue aggressively the possibility of doing something bigger."
Tuesday night, the House GOP approved a plan members call "cut, cap and balance," saying it would cut $6 trillion over a decade without tax hikes. Observers say it is dead on arrival in the Senate.
It takes fortitude from members of both parties to tackle the debt and deficit in a meaningful way, Carney said, noting that Obama repeatedly stated he was willing to catch flak from his party for some of the options being discussed.
"What's need here is the political will to get outside of one's comfort zone," Obama said. "That would be required for anything that is significant in size, in terms of the deficit-reduction packages that we're talking about."
Carney repeated Obama's position that he would not sign "a series of provisions that temporarily or in a limited fashion raise the debt ceiling" only to have to keep revisiting the matter later because it sends the wrong signal "to everyone around the globe about Washington's capacity to deal with its fiscal issues."
But "if we send a signal from Washington that Washington works, that Washington can tackle big problems, that that will have significantly positive impact around the globe," Carney said, "it will remind people about why the United States is the best country to invest in, why we are, as we have always been, a safe harbor in terms of the security of your investments."
Time is running short, Carney said.
"We are … in the 11th hour," he said. "We need to meet, talk, consult, narrow down what our options are and figure out in fairly short order, you know, which train we're riding into the station."
