The speaker had earlier said he would consider raising revenue only by curtailing tax breaks or capping deductions for top earners. To cut spending on entitlements, some Republicans have advocated raising the Medicare eligibility age or raising premiums or co-payments for wealthier Medicare recipients, known as means testing.
Obama last week reduced his demand for new revenue to $1.4 trillion from $1.6 trillion.
The anti-tax Club for Growth urged Boehner today not to agree to a debt-limit increase.
“Raising the debt ceiling would give away one of the best tools the Republicans have in their arsenal to force real reform,” the organization’s president, Chris Chocola, said in an e-mailed statement.
Unilateral Authority
Obama is pressing for unilateral authority to raise the federal debt ceiling, while Boehner’s latest offer stipulates that “any debt limit increase would require cuts and reforms of a greater amount,” said Boehner spokesman Michael Steel. Cuts of $1 trillion, as Boehner is seeking, would be about enough to cover a one-year debt limit increase.
The Congressional Budget Office has said that a failure to avert the tax increases and spending cuts would probably lead to a recession in the first half of 2013. Republicans say their leverage to force spending cuts could increase in 2013 as the need approaches to increase the federal debt limit as early as mid-February.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 0.7 percent to 1,423.45 at 1:58 p.m. in New York. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 55.22 points, or 0.4 percent, to 13,190.23. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note increased five basis points to 1.75 percent.
Less Revenue
The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that letting the tax cuts expire for annual income exceeding $1 million would generate $366 billion less revenue over a decade than the $829 billion that Obama’s plan would collect by setting the annual threshold at $250,000.