Washington - President Barack Obama met a dozen Republican
senators for dinner on Wednesday, in a rare break from the rancour that has
driven two years of paralysing Washington rows over taxes and spending.
Obama, hardly known for flattering and charming his
political foes, sat down for more than two hours with some of his most vocal
critics, at an exclusive Washington hotel a few blocks north of the White
House.
The group included Senators Lindsey Graham, John McCain,
Kelly Ayotte, Pat Toomey, Bob Corker and Tom Coburn, congressional sources and
Obama aides said. The White House also said Obama footed the bill.
News also broke that Obama, a Democrat, will take his case
directly to rank-and-file lawmakers on Capitol Hill next week and will speak to
Republicans from the Senate minority and the majority in the House of
Representatives.
"The president asked for the opportunity to speak to
the caucuses about the priorities on his legislative agenda," White House
spokesperson Jay Carney said in a short statement revealing little of Obama's
tactics.
Top Republican Senator Mitch McConnell had earlier announced
that Obama would attend the Republican Party's weekly Senate policy lunch at
the US Capitol for the first time since 2010, on 14 March.
Rare event
McConnell, the Senate Republican minority leader, expressed
appreciation that Obama had accepted his "recommendation" to hear
from his party's members.
"We have numerous challenges facing the country and
Republicans have offered the president serious solutions to shrink Washington
spending and grow the economy," McConnell said.
"And we will have an opportunity to discuss them with
the president at the lunch."
Graham earlier told reporters that the president had asked
him to get a group of Republicans together for dinner and that he was
"honoured" to help, and bemoaned the fact such events were so rare in
polarised Washington.
"The fact that there is a lot of interest in a dinner
between the president and a handful of Republican senators is a pretty good
statement about where we're at as a nation," Graham said.
Graham and McCain have been thorns in Obama's side during
the early months of his second term, combining to derail the possible
nomination of US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice as secretary of state.
Immigration reform coalition
They have also tag-teamed on delaying other Obama national
security nominations, demanding more details on how the president responded to
the raid on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya last year.
But the veteran senators also met with Obama at the White
House this month and could emerge as key players in the president's push to
create a coalition for comprehensive immigration reform.
Obama has recently telephoned several Republicans seen as
most open to dialogue on the deep ideological rift in Washington over taxes and
spending, which prompted an $85bn austerity hit known as the sequester Friday.
The blind cuts to defence and domestic spending came into
force owing to a trigger mechanism set in the event that Obama and Republicans
failed to come to an agreement on cutting the deficit.
Experts warn that the cuts, in force for the rest of the
year, could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and shave 0.7% off an already
tepid rate of economic growth.
Though Obama's new dialogue with Republicans may augur a
change of tone, there were no signs it would lead to any imminent breakthrough.
Stop-gap funding measure
Obama's main challenge in advancing legislation on the
budget and other priorities, including gun control and immigration reform, lies
with the conservative Republican caucus in the House.
And Republicans refuse to agree to new tax revenue hikes to
cut the deficit, demanding instead significant cuts to government programmes,
while Obama insists on a "balanced" plan of closed tax loopholes and
targeted spending cuts.
In another development, the House passed a stop-gap funding
measure to keep the government operating through fiscal year 2013, ahead of a
27 March deadline.
The Republican-sponsored bill would shift several billion
dollars to certain military operations as a way to soften the blow of the
sequester.
It now heads to the Senate.
0 comments:
Post a Comment