The press office for House Speaker John Boehner just emailed some excerpts from his speech to the Economic Club of New York tonight.
Boehner is in town–after a westward swing to support Jane Corwin in New York-26–to address Wall Street about Republican plans for the debt-ceiling, which Congress must raise by early August to keep the country from defaulting on its debts.
Earlier today, Senator Charles Schumer took the visit as an opportunity to call on the speaker to state unequivocally that Republicans will raise the debt ceiling, regardless of whether Democrats meet their demands to dramatically cut federal spending.
From the look of Boehner’s remarks, it appears the speaker is trying to both reassure the financial community, without exactly giving up the leverage that he hopes will yield another round of spending cuts.
Some excerpts of the excerpts below (full list here):
“It’s true that allowing America to default would be irresponsible. But it would be more irresponsible to raise the debt ceiling without simultaneously taking dramatic steps to reduce spending and reform the budget process.”
…
“Without significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt limit increase. And the cuts should be greater than the accompanying increase in debt authority the president is given. We should be talking about cuts of trillions, not just billions. They should be actual cuts and program reforms, not broad deficit or debt targets that punt the tough questions to the future. And with the exception of tax hikes — which will destroy jobs – everything is on the table. That includes honest conversations about how best to preserve Medicare, because we all know, with millions of Baby Boomers beginning to retire, the status quo is unsustainable. If we don’t act boldly now, the markets will act for us very soon. That’s the warning we got from Standard & Poor’s a few weeks ago.”
