The debt talks between Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner collapsed over the issue of taxes, Obama wants to include a tax increase in the deal to raise the debt limit, Republicans refuse to raise them.
Then both Obama and Boehner took to the airwaves. Boehner's comments are in the video above and Obama's can be found here.
Commentary accuses Obama of "trying to talk the markets into a panic"
....He claims to have put $1.5 trillion in cuts on the table, plus $600 billion in entitlement reductions, in exchange for tax increases of the same size. He says Republicans said they would accept a dollar in higher taxes (or “revenue”) for every four dollars in cuts, which isn’t exactly saying “no’” to everything. For their part, Republicans in the House passed their cut, cap and balance bill on Wednesday, and it included an increase in the debt ceiling, so even by his own account his criticisms of the GOP are not accurate.
The Republican controlled House did pass a bill that would raise the limit, but Democrats in the Senate killed it and voted to table the Cut, Cap and Balance Act after Obama threaten to veto it. Showing Obama's petulant, childish statement after Boehner walked out of the talks to be dishonest from the get-go.
H/T to AmSpec we see a report from Reuters showing that Egan-Jones, credit rating agency "has cut the United States' top credit ranking, citing concerns over the country's high debt load and the difficulty the government faces in significantly reducing spending."
I am giving the last word to PJ Tatler:
We’re seeing what happens when someone with zero executive experience gets elected to the most difficult job in the world. Barack Obama is in over his head.
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