January 17, 1996
Web posted at: 9:30 p.m. EST
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Chances of a budget reconciliation between the GOP and the White House dimmed Wednesday when Republican congressional leaders suddenly called off a planned meeting with President Clinton, demanding that the president submit a new plan before negotiations resume.
The cancellation was announced just a half hour before the meeting was scheduled to begin.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and House Majority Leader Dick Armey informed Clinton of the decision in a 40-minute phone call after a long, closed-door Republican strategy session.
In a statement, the Republican leadership said they had told Clinton they were prepared to resume talks with him "once he proposes a firm budget offer that moves in the direction of the bipartisan common ground our proposals have established."
White House spokesman Mike McCurry said Clinton was disappointed, but insisted that the budget process "is not dead." Its vital signs though, are "very faint," McCurry said.
McCurry said the opposition party kept raising new demands after the president met the old ones. He said the president already had new ideas on the table, and that a new plan would be a "step backward".
Wednesday's meeting was planned a week ago when talks between the two sides were suspended to provide each party an opportunity to examine their positions on their respective seven-year balanced budget plans.
The two sides held 50 hours of talks over a number of days. But in the week since talks were suspended, Gingrich has sounded pessimistic about chances for a deal.
McCurry laid the blame for Wednesday's collapse on the GOP. "It's a recess and the bell has rung, and the Democrats are back in class. We don't know where the Republicans are," he said "They've been out in the country (during a congressional recess) and maybe they were out talking to hard-edged Republicans."
On January 6, Clinton offered a plan that would balance the budget by 2002 using congressional economic data, but the Republicans said it did not go far enough to meet their demands for trimming spending on social programs, turning more power over to the states, and cutting taxes.
The two sides are particularly at odds over how far to go in reducing the rate of growth of the Medicare medical insurance plan for the elderly and the size of a tax cut.
Gingrich made it clear that Republicans are prepared to work out a deal with Democrats -- without the president -- or wait until they put a Republican in the White House (170K AIFF sound or 170K WAV sound). "Life goes on with or without a budget negotiation," Gingrich said.
Both sides downplayed Wednesday's cancellation of talks, calling their telephone discussion a "good conversation," and holding out hope for further negotiations.
On January 26, the current temporary funding bill that ended the second of two partial government shutdowns expires.
Although Republicans have tried to use the past shutdowns to wrangle a budget deal, Gingrich and other Republican leaders have said they do not plan to take that route again.
Instead, this time, Gingrich has suggested that Congress might pass a number of targeted appropriations bills to keep open sections of the government it favors, and close parts it does not.
The White House has said the president will veto any such measures.
In what could become another sticking point in the budget talks, a furious Dole pointed to a photograph of a January 3 budget meeting released by the White House to Time magazine, saying it portrayed Republicans as "props" while Clinton lectured them.
"We sit there as props in a Time magazine piece, and that wasn't the understanding," Dole said angrily. "We told them we're not going to go to the White House unless there's a solid proposal, unless we can be assured we're all going to play by the same rules."
Responding to the complaint, McCurry said, "The president was using the easels as a prop, not the majority leader."
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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