WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON - House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi signaled flexibility on enacting deficit cuts this year as a congressional super committee remains deadlocked over a budget-savings plan.
While Boehner on Thursday derided a Democratic proposal to raise taxes by $1.3 trillion, the Ohio Republican didn’t rule out closing provisions in the tax code to raise revenue in exchange for a Democratic willingness to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Pelosi, a California Democrat, called for “balance” between taxes and spending cuts while not rejecting a proposal for measuring inflation that would mean lower cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.
Both leaders urged the supercommittee to agree on a plan before its Nov. 23 deadline for proposing legislation to trim at least $1.2 trillion from the deficit over the next decade. Failure to reach a deal would trigger automatic spending cuts.
“It’s my commitment to try to get to an outcome,” Boehner told reporters in Washington. “I am not surprised we are having some difficulty because this isn’t easy. It’s time for everybody to get serious about this.”
The congressional supercommittee is at an impasse over the insistence by Democrats on tax increases and Republicans’ refusal to consider them. Democrats have proposed almost $3 trillion in budget savings, with about half consisting of tax increases, according to a congressional aide.
Republicans proposed a $2.2 trillion plan, according to a Senate aide familiar with the proposal. It includes $600 million in new revenue, mostly by assuming economic growth, the aide said.
Boehner said the reported $50 billion in Medicaid cuts in the Democratic plan won’t begin to put a dent in the amount the government spends on the program. “There is a lot more room there to help find common ground,” he said.
Pelosi said she is eager for the bipartisan supercommittee to reach a deal promptly so Congress can “send a message of confidence to the country and to the world. We stand ready to reach an agreement.”
Republicans and Democrats should “exploit the fast-track opportunity that is there” to enact whatever deal the panel proposes without amendments, Pelosi said. The law creating the committee also guarantees votes in the House and Senate, where the threat of a filibuster would be banned.
“It’s a missed opportunity; it is even worse than that if we do not do this,” Pelosi said. “It behooves all of us to be as open as possible” to new ideas.
Asked whether she could accept a change in the formula for calculating Social Security cost-of-living adjustments, Pelosi said, “Let’s just seek a package. Let’s not, again, exclude anything.”
Still, she said, “It’s not fair to say to a senior you are goingto pay more for Social Security and we are not going to touch a hair on the head of the wealthiest people in our country.”
Democrats, led by President Barack Obama, have proposed raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans to help raise revenue.
Under a revised formula for calculating Social Security inflation adjustments, senior citizens would get smaller increases in benefits, which would provide some with less money to pay their Medicare premiums.
On July 6, as Obama was trying to negotiate a deficit-reduction plan with House Republicans, Pelosi voiced concern about using an inflation gauge different from the Consumer Price Index to calculate Social Security adjustments.
Boehner has linked closing provisions in the tax code to reducing overall marginal tax rates as part of an overhaul.
In a Sept. 16 speech to the Washington Economic Club, he said the deficit committee “can develop principles for broadbased tax reform” that would be enacted later.
On Thursday, Boehner reiterated that a tax overhaul should be left to the legislative committees that have jurisdiction over revenue.
In his aborted talks withObama to reach a deficit-reduction deal, Boehner showed a willingness to trade revenue increases for entitlement cuts.
“I’d be willing to do revenues, but only if the president were willing to really look at fundamental reform of our entitlement programs,” Boehner said at an Oct. 6 forum sponsored by the Atlantic Monthly and the Aspen Institute.
Asked Thursday whether his fellow Republicans would accept closing provisions in the tax code to raise revenue, Texas’ Rep. Kevin Brady said it would depend on the specific proposal.
Any plan to close provisions in the tax code for energy producers such as oil companies is “off the table” because “they are job creators,” said Brady, a member of the House’s taxwriting Ways and Means Committee.
Boehner said across-theboard spending cuts that would be triggered in 2013 if Congress failed to pass a deficit plan aren’t acceptable. Nor is repealing the trigger for the spending cuts if the supercommittee can’t reach an agreement, he said.
“Our goal is to meet the targets as set forth in the Deficit Control Act,” he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Heidi Przybyla of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 10/28/2011