A president sidelined

September 8, 2012








Fine, Obama said. Talk. Knock yourselves out. There is no pride of authorship here, just do it — if you can.


“I’m not concerned about protocol,” he said. His concern was “an end run around the White House.”

Before the meeting, without telling Obama, the four leaders had tentatively agreed on the framework of a deal. The congressional plan guaranteed that the debt limit would have to be revisited during the 2012 presidential campaign, and Obama was insisting that any agreement would have to take the country through the election.



“Listen,” Boehner said he told Obama, “I understand it. All right? But you’re not going to have a choice. We’ve got an agreement.”

The speaker recalled, “He was moaning and groaning and whining and demanding . . . threatening. . . . He was pretty desperate.” Obama again said he would veto such a bill.

We’re too close to default to reopen the talks, Boehner said. Congress is going to move forward on its own.

Asked recently about Boehner’s description of their late-night call, Obama said, “Listen, anybody who knows me knows I don’t moan, I don’t groan, I don’t whine.” He laughed, “I’m not desperate. I was very angry about how he had behaved, and more concerning was the fact that we were now only a few days from there literally being $5 billion left in the Treasury for the United States government.”

Just $5 billion was about half a day’s worth of the federal government’s expenditures — closer to the wire than the public had been told.

The president told his senior staff that the call with Boehner had led nowhere.

“So we’ve got to figure out Plan B. Which is, how do we get out of this thing?” he said.

The problem was that they did not have a Plan B.









Krone either would not or could not conceal his anger.







After the meeting, Obama made a beeline for Krone. The others stepped back so the two could talk, but they still overheard the president’s words.

“I’m sorry,” Obama said, putting an arm around Krone’s shoulder. “You didn’t deserve that. I know how hard you’re working, and I know we wouldn’t even have a chance without you.”

Reid gave Krone a ride back to the Capitol. The majority leader was almost like a father to him.

“You stood up to him,” Reid said. “He needed to hear it, and nobody was telling him.”

Asked later about the meeting with Reid and Krone, Obama said, “What I said to them is, essentially, any short-term deal is not going to be acceptable. We can go back to the drawing board, but we’re running out of time. They need to understand we’re not going to do a short-term deal.”

After more pressure from Obama, Reid split from the other congressional leaders. Later that night, he released a $2.7 trillion deficit reduction plan with a single-step debt limit increase that would last through 2012.

Five days later, on Friday, July 29, by a narrow margin of 218 to 210, the House passed Boehner’s version of the proposal. It included the two-step procedure that the president adamantly opposed.

In the White House at 10 later that night, Obama’s key advisers discussed the House vote. There was a chance the Senate Democrats would fold, because the fastest solution would be to pass the House bill and get out of town for their summer recess. If the bill managed to gain Senate approval, would the president really veto it?





Obama appeared unexpectedly at the door of William Daley, his chief of staff. “What’s going on? What are you guys talking about?”

He knew, of course. They quickly recapped.

Could I actually veto it? Obama asked, adopting his law professor manner. What would happen on the day of the veto? The day after?









So, no, Obama said, he was not going to cave. Period. He said good night, got up and left. He was very agitated.



“And the people who would bear the pain of that would be the people less prepared,” Geithner told others, “less able to absorb that cost. It would be something you could not cure. It is not something you can come back and say, a week later, ‘Oh, we fixed it.’ It would be indelible, incurable. It would last for generations.”



Rob Garver and Evelyn Duffy contributed to this report.

Adapted from “The Price of Politics,” by Bob Woodward

to be published on Tuesday by Simon & Schuster.

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