Boehner says he ‘struck a nerve’ on cuts

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) says he “struck a nerve” with Democrats in a speech this week in New York City when he called for “trillions” in spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit.

“Clearly we struck a nerve. The response from the White House, Democrats and the left has been panic and hysteria,” Boehner said in a Thursday news conference at the Capitol. “For years, Washington has gotten away with kicking the can down the road on the debt and deficit without ever having to face the realities of the government’s spending addiction. While this may be hard for the Washington crowd to accept, those days are over.”

{mosads}Boehner also forcefully rebutted claims that a delay in raising the $14.3 trillion federal debt ceiling would rattle the markets and threaten the economy. The markets, he said, would react more negatively if Washington failed to rein in spending.

“If we don’t act boldly now, the markets will act for us very soon,” he said. “Remember, Standard & Poor’s warned several weeks ago that it may downgrade its U.S. debt rating, not over the debt-limit fight, but because Washington has no plan to tackle its massive debt. The greatest threat to our economy, to job creation and to our children’s future is doing nothing. Doing nothing is not an option. The American people won’t tolerate it, and neither will we.”

Boehner said lawmakers will have ample time to discuss ways to cut spending in the coming weeks in the lead-up to a debt-limit vote. But he ruled out attaching what he called spending-cut “gimmicks” to a hike in the borrowing authority.

“There are going to have to be a bunch of budget process reforms. … I don’t want phony caps, phony targets,” Boehner said. “We know what the challenges are, why don’t we go tackle the problem?”

Asked if he supports a bipartisan Senate measure that would cap spending at certain levels, he said he didn’t want to tie himself to that, reiterating that the cuts must “be real.”

“All the gimmicks that have been used in the past have never worked, Congress has found a way to wiggle out of all of them. The only way to do this is the right way — and that is to go in and make real program changes that would put these entitlement programs on a much stronger foundation where they can be preserved for the tens of millions of Americans who count on them,” Boehner said.

But he refused to expand on the details or timeframes regarding the potential cuts.

“When it comes to savings in this effort to increase the debt limit, I think it’s a little too early to lock myself into what kind of timeframe, but I clearly believe it’s time to bend the cost curve and to get America headed toward a solid fiscal foundation which we do not see today,” Boehner said.

—An initial version of this story was published at 12:19 p.m.