Cantor: House won’t vote on clean debt limit extension in September

Cantor later clarified that he was only closing the door on a clean debt ceiling vote by September. That prompted Hoyer to ask if a clean vote would happen any time before mid-November, but Cantor did not offer an explicit reply.

{mosads}”It is our hope that we can work together across the aisle to solve the problems to come up with the answers as to how we are going to pay back the additional debt that we’ll have to incur in this country,” he said.

Congress appears headed toward another spending showdown this fall, as the debt ceiling will need to be extended and Republicans have said they will again look for spending reductions as a condition for this increase.

In 2011, the House voted down a clean extension of the debt ceiling, and Congress ultimately approved the Budget Control Act, which allowed for an increase but set up the sequester, which took effect this year.

During their weekly discussion, Hoyer again called on House Republicans to agree to a budget conference with the Senate in order to arrive at a budget agreement for 2014. But Cantor again indicated that a conference is unlikely because Senate Democrats are insisting that some of the budget shortfall be filled in with new tax revenue.

“It is something that we should commit our selves to working out,” Cantor said of the idea of a conference agreement. “But as the gentleman knows, the position of the majority is, we don’t want to enter into discussions if the pre-requisite is you have to raise taxes.”