Listen to the entire program<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/p>\n![\"obama\"](\"http:\/\/politicalgraffiti.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/03\/obama_spineless.jpg\")
Republicans are back at the White House today for face-to-face negotiations over the debt ceiling and deficit cuts. The GOP is reportedly pushing for a 10-year budget deal in exchange for their approval on the debt cap. Talks abruptly stalled last month when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor walked out of negotiations in obstinate disagreement over Democrat’s proposals to raise taxes as part of a compromise deal. Some Republicans have so far been cavalier about a default, but prominent voices are increasingly raising alarm about the potential consequences as the August 2nd deadline to raise Treasury’s 14.3 trillion borrowing cap looms. Standard and Poor’s recently announced it will reduce the US’s credit rating immediately if the US misses a payment on its debt, sending anxiety through financial markets. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner insists his bureau will allow a default if no deal is brokered, but some Republicans are calling this a bluff. South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint recently appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe saying, \u201cWe\u2019re not going to default. We will pay our debts and it is irresponsible for Secretary Geithner to suggest we wouldn\u2019t.\u201d The President has chided both parties for failing to come to an agreement, saying during yesterday’s Twitter town hall that each side needed to “put their dogmas” and “sacred cows aside.” Reports have circulated that Obama is prepared to sacrifice major “sacred cows” of the Democratic party to reach a resolution – namely Social Security and Medicare. Yesterday evening an aide said Social Security would not be gutted, but the President was focused on “strengthening” it. The President has publicly said he is not interested in unilaterally raising the debt ceiling by interpreting the 14th amendment of the constitution as granting that power. However, the GOP is embracing a plan to use the constitution for its own means, by floating proposals for a constitutional amendment that would mandate a balanced budget by 2018, and force a super two-thirds majority vote to raise taxes at the federal level.<\/p>\n
GUEST: Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect as well as a Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow. He was a longtime columnist for BusinessWeek, and continues to write columns in the Boston Globe. He is also the author of “A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama’s Promise, Wall Street’s Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future”<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republicans are back at the White House today for face-to-face negotiations over the debt ceiling and deficit cuts. The GOP is reportedly pushing for a 10-year budget deal in exchange for their approval on the debt cap. Talks abruptly stalled last month when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor walked out of negotiations in obstinate disagreement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}