He insisted that Obama has a plan to handle the debt ceiling but he can't quite locate it.
It exists, but where?
What are the numbers?
Video.
Transcript
QUESTION: you basically have this Boehner plan that you say can’t get through the Senate, and you’ve got a Reid plan that the Republicans don’t think you can get through the Senate or the House, and you’re saying we want a compromise, what was the point of giving a primetime address to the nation without an Obama plan and say neither of these other plans can work? Where is -- where is your plan?
MR. CARNEY: I understand that idea that there is not an Obama plan is like --
QUESTION: But there’s not. There’s not one on paper. There’s not one on paper.
MR. CARNEY: -- point number one -- is point number one on the talking points issued by the Republican Party. I get it.
QUESTION: No, no, that’s not a talking point.
MR. CARNEY: Okay?
QUESTION: No, no, show us the plan. It’s not a talking point. That’s unfair. Where is the plan?
MR. CARNEY: We have said from the -- first of all, the President put forward in detail his principles at George Washington University --
QUESTION: Principles, right. That’s not a plan.
MR. CARNEY: -- quite a lot of detail. The President stood before you -- I can’t remember if you were here Friday night. Some of you weren’t because you cut out early, but a lot of you were.
And he put forward in detail with numbers what he’s willing to do. He then referred from the podium to the fact that White House officials will be briefing in detail what our plan is.
Now, the purpose of putting forward a plan on paper -- our interest in this has been to get a compromise, to get a deal. It has not been to politically position ourselves, say, with things that appeal to our base, maybe pieces of legislation that we know can’t pass but it would be greeted warmly by certain constituencies. Our goal, and the reason why the negotiations have been conducted the way they have been conducted, is because we want a result. That’s the way the President has.
And it is simply not the case. The senior members of the House Republican leadership can open their desk drawer, pull out reams of paper that represents the President’s proposals and his counterproposals, and his counter-counterproposals, and his understanding that they need more of this and that he would like more of that. There is plenty of detail.
QUESTION: But even the President gave numbers on Friday night -- White House aides were saying last night he was giving the speech to the nation because most Americans were not paying attention until last night. So even if he gave these numbers on Friday night, they have not -- the American people were not paying attention Friday night, by your own estimation. So why didn’t he say last night, here are the nine things that I support? Here are the numbers, here’s what I want to do on taxes, and just lay it out -- and say, call your congressman with this -- not with this vague --
MR. CARNEY: The point -- I mean, the fact is you address the nation only so often on primetime. The President has been out here with an unbelievable amount of regularity talking to you, talking to the American people throughout this process. He has put forward in great detail -- I mean, if you guys haven’t talked about it on air or put it in your newspapers or online, then you should, because the detail is there.
Secondly, he needed to talk to the American people last night because -- for a good reason -- because they have their own lives to worry about and they count on Washington not always to take care of everything, but to take care of the big things like making sure we don’t default on our obligations. And he needed to talk to the American people, to those Americans who haven’t been paying close attention, to let them know where this stands and why it’s so important and why the risk is there that if Congress doesn’t act -- and we believe it will -- something that has never happened before in our history could happen and it would be very bad, indeed.
That’s why he had to address the country and why he wanted to explain to them his view that compromise is so necessary.
QUESTION: One other quick thing. I think on CBS radio this morning Dan Pfeiffer said that if Congress does not act by August 2nd this could lead to a depression. Is that your position, that we might have a depression in America?
MR. CARNEY: You know what, depression, how you -- what I know, what economic experts have said, is that -- and, again, Republican and Democrat, Jim Baker, Ronald Reagan, all sorts have said that a default on our obligations would produce an economic calamity. How you define that obviously depends on how long it lasts and what the ongoing implications of that would be.
We don’t believe it’s come to pass. Economic calamity is plenty scary and we should not even entertain that.
QUESTION: But over the weekend Democrats were saying there’s going to be a “Boehner drop” if there’s no action. Asian markets are going to crash on Sunday. Didn’t happen. American markets didn’t crash on Monday, and thankfully they have not crashed on --
MR. CARNEY: Ed, I want to move on, but you should go on the air and tell your viewers there’s nothing to worry about. That’s one approach.
Chuck.
QUESTION: Jay, why not release the last offer that Boehner made? I mean, instead of -- if you don’t want to release your own plan, release that plan. If that’s the deal -- if that’s the last offer he made and you guys are willing to go back with a few minor tweaks, release it. It’s the last week -- release it.
MR. CARNEY: I’m not going to -- look, we have shown a lot of leg on what we were proposing --
QUESTION: Where?
MR. CARNEY: From the podium, right here. (Laughter.) And from the Roosevelt Room. Certainly the Speaker of the House can address, or his people can address what they were -- what their last offer was. They claim that they walked away from the table because of the $400 billion --
QUESTION: Why not you do it? If they throw it out there and then you’re --
MR. CARNEY: The President stood here -- Chuck, again, I can’t remember if you were here -- it might have been Kristen -- but the President stood here on Friday night and went into great detail. You should look at the transcript. The President’s people met --
QUESTION: I understand, I’ve seen the transcript -- there’s still nothing out there. Why not just release that plan?
MR. CARNEY: Is it because you -- I mean, look, you need something printed for you, you can’t write it down? There is ample detail --
QUESTION: It’s not a plan. No, it’s not a plan. It was details of the plan, but it wasn’t a plan the same way that we’re getting a plan on the House side or that we’re getting a plan on the Senate side. It’s not.
QUESTION: We don’t know what the Medicare thing is. We don’t know what the Social Security part of this is. There wasn’t -- I mean, there was a lot of missing detail.
MR. CARNEY: We talked in great detail about what’s in Medicare, and you know it.
QUESTION: Why not put it out there, though? You guys went before the American people last night -- and I know that you’re probably getting frustrated because we’re all asking a version of the same question -- but you went before the American people last night and said come -- call your members of Congress and tell them we want a compromise. Well, you had a plan that you were making the case for which sounded like a version of the compromise. Release it to the public. I mean, that’s --
MR. CARNEY: $1.5 to $1.7 trillion in agreed-upon domestic discretionary non-defense savings -- cuts; other savings -- and on the most important stuff, the tough stuff, the stuff that makes it very hard for Democrats to do it but they’d be willing to do it -- important savings on entitlement reform. You know the issues; the President talked about it, other people talked about it, in terms of the kinds of reform that would produce significant savings. Okay? Significant savings in defense -- $400 billion -- significant savings in defense spending. All right? Significant savings in revenue through closing loopholes and tax reform that would produce -- by lowering rates and broadening the base, it would produce significant savings.
There are details -- we can go through details. And what we put forward -- again, this is a fluid situation. The point is, as both parties have said, they were engaged in serious negotiations; we were close to an agreement. One party said they walked away because of an insistence on an extra $400 billion in revenue. We said we could easily talk about that and resolve that issue. And that’s the kind of compromise --
QUESTION: -- $800 billion in new revenue into the Treasury --
MR. CARNEY: That’s correct.
QUESTION: -- coming out of tax reform.
MR. CARNEY: Correct.
QUESTION: And which parts of -- and was entitlement reform going to be cuts upfront and then a condition?
MR. CARNEY: Well, you know how things that had been talked about in terms of the reforms that would obviously be in the entitlements be phased over a certain period of time -- nobody has talked about upfront tax revenues. For example, the President himself said nothing before 2013 -- and how these things would play out. But these were significant savings, real savings -- the kinds of things in terms of entitlement reform that people have talked about for a long time, and Republicans in particular -- the President was willing to do. And he was looking for a partner, and he felt he had one, and he hopes he still has one going forward.
QUESTION: If he comes back with that $800 billion, why don’t you guys just accept the deal, ask a senator to introduce it in the Senate?
MR. CARNEY: We’ll see.
Carol.
QUESTION: Just quickly to follow on Chuck, I mean, the President did say to us on Friday that you guys would open the books and show us the paper. And then when we were in the Roosevelt Room, there was paper that we asked for that we weren’t actually physically handed. So was that -- are you going to give that to us?
MR. CARNEY: The senior people in that room walked you through the numbers, okay? You know -- I mean, we can engage in this, but you know that the reason why we’ve approached it this way is precisely to make it -- to create the optimum circumstances for a compromise. It is -- most of you are veteran Washington reporters. You know how this process works; that if you -- that when you put forward a position, it becomes highly -- on difficult issues, before a compromise is reached -- it becomes charged politically and your chances of actually getting an agreement diminish significantly. That’s how it works. You know that’s how it works.
And it’s for that -- if you don’t, well, you should. Others do. It is precisely because we wanted and believed and hoped that we could reach a compromise that the negotiations were conducted the way they were -- by both sides, by the way.
It is one thing to say that, yes, Republicans put forward plans that everybody knows can’t become law. Republicans were also engaged in quiet, detailed, concrete negotiations to reach a compromise.
QUESTION: Are you worried about activists tearing this -- activists on your side of the aisle tearing it apart?
MR. CARNEY: And theirs. And theirs.
QUESTION: But that’s why you didn’t -- that’s why this hasn’t gone public?
MR. CARNEY: You know how it works.
QUESTION: I understand that, but that is the reason you --
MR. CARNEY: Because we wanted an outcome that if -- as we’ve talked about, we’ve cited Bob Dole and others, you got to hold hands, get in the boat together, okay? That’s why.
Oh, my God.
What an embarrassment!
Listen to the press actually boo Carney:
The guy is a disaster. He lacks control. He isn't quick on his feet. Carney is a lot like his boss.
