Breaking news: Boehner abandons efforts to reach comprehensive debt-reduction deal

By Paul Kane and Lori Montgomery, Updated: Saturday, July 9, 8:41 PM

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) abandoned efforts Saturday night to reach a comprehesive debt-reduction deal worth more than $4 trillion in savings, telling President Obama that a mid-size package was the only politically possible alternative to avoid a first-ever default on the nation’s mounting national debt.
After speaking with Obama -- who is hosting a key meeting Sunday evening on steps forward on the debt issue -- Boehner issued the following statement:

“Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes. I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase.”
The impasse on the massive plan leaves Obama and congressional negotiators back at the smaller package of cuts to federal agency budgets and more modest reforms to entitlement programs. That package, which had been negotiated by Vice President Biden and key GOP leaders including House Majority Leader Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.), would come to somewhere between $2 trillion and $2.4 trillion in savings, allowing for Congress to approve an extension of the federal debt ceiling into the spring of 2013.