Obama calls Democratic leaders to White House

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama summoned top Democratic

lawmakers back to the White House Wednesday to resume negotiations

on averting a potentially crippling government default, as

attention focused on a new bipartisan budget plan emerging in the

Senate.

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The White House also indicated Obama would be willing to sign a

short-term debt limit increase – something he’s opposed – if it’s

merely a stop-gap measure to allow time for a broader plan to get

into place, something that likely couldn’t be finished by the Aug.

2 deadline to increase the government’s borrowing limit.

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Obama’s meeting with House and Senate Democratic leaders, planned

for mid-afternoon Wednesday, marked a partial resumption of talks

that ended last week after five days straight of Obama huddling

with lawmakers from both parties, with little progress to show for

it. But the announcement Tuesday of a possible deal by the Senate

“Gang of Six” was seized on by Obama as a possible breakthrough.

Now the job ahead for the president, if he is to build momentum

behind the plan, includes selling members of his own party on the

cuts to entitlement programs that it embraces.

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“We are in the 11th hour,” said White House press secretary Jay

Carney, repeating what Obama had said Wednesday. “We need to meet,

talk, consult and narrow down in fairly short order what train

we’re riding into the station.”

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Carney also indicated that the president would be willing to

support a short-term extension as a stop-gap measure. Carney said

Obama would not support a short-term extension “absent an agreement

on a larger deal.”

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The plan by the Gang of Six is far too complicated and contentious

to advance before the Aug. 2 deadline to avoid a default that

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and other experts warn would

roil the markets, drive up interest rates and threaten to take the

country back into a recession. But the plan’s authors clearly hope

it could serve as a template for a “grand bargain” later in the

year that could erase perhaps $4 trillion from the deficit over the

coming decade.

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It includes tax hikes on some that are opposed by Republicans and

cuts to Medicare and other entitlements that many Democrats are

against.

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