And here I thought it was Reid he was telling Obama to hold firm:
White House officials rushed Friday to squash an emerging bipartisan deal crafted by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) because they viewed it as a worse than proposals from Boehner.
It would have locked in next year’s even-deeper government spending levels and suspended the medical device tax, a key funding stream for Obamacare that’s unpopular with both parties.
White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and Deputy Chief of Staff Rob Nabors called Reid, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). The president didn’t want Democrats anywhere near that deal, and the Senate leaders, in turn, warned the rank and file to hold back and avoid committing to the deal. The president reiterated his concerns in a Saturday meeting with Democratic leaders, and they made clear that they couldn’t accept the proposal.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/...
Wow...they played that beautifully. Obama, as the face of the party, still gets to seem somewhat reasonable while people are calling Reid the real intransigent player on the Democratic side. Yet this whole time its actually the WH thats unwilling to take any deals.
This actually makes sense now cause people were shocked last Saturday when Reid rejected the Collins proposal, since there were already 6-7 Dems on it and it was looking like the vehicle that would come out of the Senate. Collins herself felt Reid's rejection and the subsequent pullback from Dem Senators came out of nowhere and was unexpected. Now we know its cause the WH told them to kill it.