UPDATE 1-US House Speaker Boehner: last offer still on table

Sun Jul 24, 2011 9:53am EDT

(Adds Boehner quotes.)

WASHINGTON, July 24 (Reuters) - Republican U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said on Sunday that he would prefer to unveil a bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling and that his last offer to Democratic President Barack Obama was still on the table.

"The preferable path would be a bipartisan plan that involves all the leaders, but it is too early to decide whether that's possible," Boehner said on Fox News Sunday. "If that's not possible, I and my Republican colleagues in the House are prepared to move on our own."

He also said that raising the debt ceiling and implementing major reforms would have to be done in two stages. "There is going to be a two-stage process. It is not physically possible to do all of this in one step."

Boehner said his offer that included some $800 billion in new tax revenue and massive spending cuts was never withdrawn. That plan was dubbed the "grand bargain" despite his decision to walk away from negotiations with Obama last week.

"I don't know, it may be pretty hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. My last offer is still out there. I've never taken my last offer off the table," Boehner said, noting that the White House never has agreed to it.

At the moment, however, Boehner said that the better path was working with his congressional colleagues "to put together a process" that is do-able. (Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky and Donna Smith, editing by Christopher Wilson)

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Comments (3)
gryphon wrote:
The US is in a slow motion train crash. You might find Medicare is pretty handy, when all this finally stops. How does $5/Euro sound? (Pretty good, actually!). How do Greek interest rates sound? Not so good.

Jul 24, 2011 10:46am EDT  --  Report as abuse
triplehex wrote:
Let the citizenry decide by having a nation wide vote on issues such as taxing millionaires and billionaire oligarchs, about whether to give x billions of dollars to the military to wage war for corporate profits or build a healthy educational system that will equip the people with the knowledge they need, whether to give billions of aid to Israel at the expense of taxpayers, whether to deny access to medical care for seniors or bolster an autocratic dictator in a profitably ‘strategic’ zone, whether to keep wasting money on nuke energy or move toward cleaner cheaper energy alternatives. This is not a democratic society and neither do any of these politicians, fat with lobbyist bribes represent the common persons interests. Or just dismantle the government all together, no taxes, no schools, no infrastructure, no police, and everyone a law unto themselves and completely armed. Let the people excersise the limited freedoms that democracy has to offer not these ‘reps’ who speak with forked tongues.

Jul 24, 2011 10:54am EDT  --  Report as abuse
web2mon wrote:
The politics of the union is destroying the nation, little by little. A ship this size is not turned on a dime and our leaders are wallowing in bad decisions and poor choices, woe be US. When a poor fool like me can predict, this predicament, months ago, something, is terribly out of kilter, as my mom would have described it. People misuse power consistently and our leaders are people who should remember this, power always fails you in the end, as results. Even if, the power brokers agree, the nation appears in deep ………

Jul 24, 2011 11:14am EDT  --  Report as abuse
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