Boehner promises Pete Peterson the war on Medicare isn't over (Reuters/Larry Downing)
Speaker John Boehner is more blatant even than most politicians about telegraphing which constituency matters to him most: Wall Street. While his caucus leadership can't run away from abolishing Medicare fast enough, Boehner is assuring Wall Street that
it's still on the agenda.
In a speech to the Economic Club of New York in Midtown Manhattan, the Ohio Republican is set to reiterate to leading financial executives that he believes that reforming Medicare should be part of negotiations in raising the debt ceiling, saying that there needs to be “an honest conversation,” because the program is on an “unsustainable path if changes are not made,” according to sources familiar with the speech. Boehner also is expected to advocate for immediate cuts rather than deficit and debt targets preferred by some Democrats.
After his talk, Boehner will take questions from two prominent Wall Street players at the intersection of Washington power: Peter G. Peterson, the private-equity giant who worked for President Richard Nixon, and Observatory Group CEO Jane Hartley, who worked for President Jimmy Carter....
Boehner’s public insistence that reforming Medicare stay a part of debt ceiling negotiations could reaffirm a concern among Wall Street types that Republicans are driving a hard bargain on the limit and will take the negotiations up to the last minute. Boehner said last week Congress must now cut trillions, not billions....
Friday evening, in a sign of unity after a disjointed week, GOP leadership, along with Ryan and Camp, released a statement saying “everything must be on the table except increasing taxes.”
Freshmen, who voted en masse for the Ryan budget, largely want entitlement reform dealt with.
It'll keep Pete Peterson and his crowd happy, no matter how disastrous the plan is with actual voters. But more than anything, this is reflecting the very thin ice Boehner is skating. He's got to try to convince the powers that be that really, his caucus isn't a bunch of nihilists perfectly willing to blow up the economy over the debt ceiling vote. He has to convince those nihilists that blowing up the economy is a really stupid idea, and in the meantime has to actually come up with some sort of policy other than Ryan's budget, something that he's been either too lazy or too arrogant to worry about up until now. All that while trying to figure out how he's going to keep that Speaker's chair when his party just voted overwhelmingly to abolish one of the most popular programs in America.