AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, center, listens as Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid makes remarks on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, July 14, 2011, after a meeting with Democrats on the debt limit.
Thursday, July 14, 2011 | 2:27 p.m.
House Speaker John Boehner puts his arm around House Majority Leader Eric Cantor as he tells reporters he and Cantor are a team, in a press conference Thursday afternoon at the U.S. Capitol.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid addresses reporters about the debt limit negotiations after a meeting of Senate Democrats with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in the Capitol Thursday afternoon. Reid is flanked by, from left to right, Geithner, and his leadership team: Sen. Patty Murray, Sen. Charles Schumer, and Sen. Dick Durbin.
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As lawmakers return to the White House today for Round Six of the debt-limit debate, it’s getting personal.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor started the fight last night, when he accused Obama of abruptly walking out of Wednesday’s negotiation saying, “I’m going to take this to the American people.”
This morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lashed back at Cantor on behalf of Democrats, accusing him of being the one that ditches meetings.
“House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has shown that he shouldn’t even be at the table. And one Republican told Politico last night...’he lost a lot of credibility when he walked away from the table. It was childish,’ ” Reid said on the Senate floor. “It was childish.”
“I just don't understand what the problem is,” House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said. “The president of the United States has had a meeting for over two hours, stands up and says 'see you tomorrow'. That's how meetings with presidents end. You don't leave first.”
Since then, the debate over the national debt has devolved into verbal sparring over who’s taking the debt debate more seriously.
Reid has returned to a familiar refrain: bemoaning that House Speaker John Boehner, a worthy negotiator, is being yanked about by more conservative elements in his party, led by Cantor.
“There’s a small group of Republicans that are putting their ideological interests ahead of families from Nevada” and across the country, he said.
“Leader Cantor has yet to make a constructive contribution to these discussions,” added Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is not in the meeting, but as next in the leadership line after Reid and Sen. Dick Durbin, has been briefed by his colleagues on the proceedings. “More than anything else, he is holding up negotiations at this point.”
But Cantor and House Speaker John Boehner are locking arms to defuse speculation that there is any rift between them.
"Let me just say, we have been in this fight together," Boehner said. "And any suggestion that the role Eric has played in these meetings has been anything less than helpful is just wrong."
“The speaker and I have consistently been on the same page,” Cantor said. “Leader Reid is, I imagine, frustrated, as we all are.”
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