Earlier tonight, House GOP leaders met with President Obama at the White House, reportedly discussing a “short-term debt-ceiling hike that would be coupled with immediate spending cuts of greater magnitude.”
In an interview this evening with National Review Online, Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, the GOP Policy Committee chairman, said that he would oppose a short-term extension.
Price says that House conservatives are not ready to “concede” that “Cut, Cap, and Balance,” the Republican Study Committee plan, will fail in the Senate.
For Price, the “Gang of Six” plan, proposed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, is also not a viable option. He dismisses its outline as a “skeleton” that will not win converts as Republicans learn more. “It does not have specifics,” he says. “When you have no specifics, you can be all things to all people.”
“Our path ahead remains ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance.’ That is our short-term, mid-term, and long-term solution,” Price says. “There are many who believe that the Senate cannot act that quickly, now that the ball is in their court, and are looking to a potential short-term plug. At this point, that is a nonstarter for us in the House.”