Republican Rep. Steve Scalise from Louisiana says that he's optimistic that there will soon be an agreement after House Republicans met with President Obama Thursday.
No deal emerged after House Republicans met with President Obama Thursday, but the two sides seemed to be inching toward some sort of progress.
Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, one of nearly two dozen House members to attend the meeting, said it was a first step.
“We’ve wanted to start this conversation so we can finally get started working out our differences and that happened yesterday,” he said on Friday’s The Daily Rundown.
House Republicans proposed a short-term increase to debt ceiling in exchange for a broader discussion on the budget impasse.
“We’ve laid out a number of different things we’d like to do to get the government open and to extend the debt ceiling–not for weeks, but for a long period of time–attached to reforms that actually stop us from continuing to hit the debt ceiling,” said the Louisiana congressman.
So far, Speaker Boehner hasn’t said anything about the short-term extension being tied to defunding healthcare, (a House GOP budget proposal that first triggered the shutdown). And after the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Republican Sen. Paul Ryan, released a Wall Street Journal op-ed without any mention of the Affordable Care Act, it seems Republicans may be willing to ease up on defunding healthcare.
“We probably should pass the things we all agree upon and then negotiate the ones we disagree on,” said Scalise.