Boehner wants debt ceiling plan by Sunday

◼ White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer responded to the speaker’s statement Saturday on Twitter. - Politico

“Our message there will be simple: if the White House won’t get serious, we will,” Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said Saturday in an emailed statement before the meeting. “The speaker is determined to tackle our spending problem in a significant way and, as he stressed last night, is committed to preventing a default on our debt.”

Boehner was expected to insist that the president agree to a package of spending cuts that match the amount needed to raise the debt limit, which would be about $2.4 trillion through the end of next year, Buck said.

“Last night the president said, ‘the only bottom line that I have is that we have to extend this debt ceiling through the next election,’” Buck wrote. “Now, we do not know what size or shape a final package will take, but it would be terribly unfortunate if the president was willing to veto a debt limit increase simply because the timetable prescribed would not be the ideal one for his re-election campaign.”◼ House Speaker John A. Boehner told his troops Saturday that he hopes to roll out a two-step strategy within the next 24 hours for raising the federal debt ceiling to avoid roiling Asian financial markets when they open Sunday, according to several participants in the conference call. - Washington Post

In the call with his House GOP colleagues, Boehner (Ohio) said he still hopes to slice as much as $4 trillion out of the federal budget over the next decade, despite the collapse of talks with President Obama on Friday over a bipartisan “grand bargain” to restrain the nation’s debt....

In the call, Boehner stressed that the path forward would be a new plan, not a proposal offered earlier this month by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to authorize Obama to raise the debt limit on his own, without explicit congressional approval.