New York Times
By Michael D. Shear
February 25, 2014
WASHINGTON
— President Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner sat across from each
other for an hour on Tuesday in the leather-bound chairs of Mr. Obama’s
office and quickly
ticked through a remarkably long list of issues.
They
chatted about economic matters like manufacturing, trade promotion
authority and flood insurance, according to aides to both men. They
discussed the Affordable Care
Act and the president’s push for an immigration overhaul. They engaged
on efforts to wind down the war in Afghanistan, the process of getting a
budget, and the stalled highway funding bill. And don’t forget the
California drought and Mr. Obama’s new plan for
fighting fires.
All
told, they spent about five and a half minutes on each of the subject
areas. (Less, actually, since the above list is not a complete record of
the topics covered during
the conversation, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said.)
But
while the meeting offered a rare moment for private sharing by the
leaders of America’s two dominant political parties, few of their
colleagues expect it to lead to
any legislative breakthroughs. Aides to both men on Tuesday called it
“constructive” but offered no evidence that Washington gridlock is over.
“They
agreed that there is a lot of work to do the rest of the year, and it
is important to work together wherever we can find common ground,” an
aide to Mr. Boehner said
in an email to reporters after the meeting.
Mr.
Carney maintained that the White House “is looking for a partner in
Congress.” But he also noted that Mr. Boehner had in the past said he
would never again negotiate
with Mr. Obama. Mr. Carney declined to say whether there seemed to be
any softening on the no-negotiation stance.
The
president and Mr. Boehner have spent most of the past five years in a
series of awkward and often fruitless negotiations. Tuesday’s exchange
of views was the first
publicly known, in-person, one-on-one since December 2012, and the only
such talk since Mr. Obama became president that was not aimed at
resolving some sort of looming fiscal crisis.
(That
doesn’t count phone calls or the time Mr. Obama invited Mr. Boehner for
a round of golf at Andrews Air Force Base in June 2011. Aides said that
social outing was
constructive, too.)
It
is unclear whether Mr. Obama might have had another, private message to
deliver to Mr. Boehner during Tuesday’s surprise meeting, which was
revealed late Monday night
in the president’s daily schedule. But nothing in their dealings so far
suggested a new détente is in the works.
The
two political adversaries met Tuesday even as the leaders in both
parties in Washington have largely resigned themselves to the fact that
almost no major legislation
will break through in the current election year. Republicans are trying
to seize control of the Senate this fall, as Democrats scramble to try
to defeat as many Republicans in the House as they can.
Mr.
Obama, for his part, has spent the month since his State of the Union
address vowing to circumvent Congress whenever possible — and has
acknowledged publicly that
he does not have high hopes for progress on economic issues or an
immigration overhaul.
“We’ve
got a Congress that prefers to say no rather than yes right now,” Mr.
Obama told Democratic governors last week. “They don’t have an
affirmative agenda. Their main
strategy is to just try to do nothing and see if they can — falsely —
give people a sense that somehow the policies that we’re trying to
pursue aren’t working for them.”
At
the same time, Mr. Boehner has done little to suggest his House would
advance any of the president’s agenda in the months leading up to the
midterm elections, telling
his members this month that he would not pursue the immigration
legislation that Mr. Obama supports, but that angered conservative
Republicans.
Republicans
have vowed to continue their push to roll back or change the Affordable
Care Act, and in a message posted on Twitter, even as the speaker was
arriving at the
White House, Mr. Boehner took a political jab at the president’s top
domestic policy.
“#ObamaCare
may increase premiums for 11 million workers, report says,” the message
from the @SpeakerBoehner Twitter account read.
After
Mr. Boehner finished the meeting in the White House, he slipped out
without talking with reporters and returned to the Capitol. Moments
later, he took to the floor
— but not to wax poetic about the “constructive” meeting he had just
had.
Instead,
he used a new — and disputed — report on the costs of insurance
premiums to attack the president’s health care law. “Another sucker
punch to our economy,” he
called it. “Another broken promise to hardworking Americans.”
The next Oval Office meeting might not come for another year.
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