By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON — As a handful of the lawmakers on the sputtering joint Congressional committee charged with drafting a deficit reduction package met for what seemed like one final time, the White House said Monday that only Congress could have produced a solution, while Republican presidential candidates moved to frame the committee’s failure to meet its deadline as a lack of leadership by President Obama.
Already some Republicans were saying Monday that they would try to spare the massive and automatic cuts to the Pentagon that will be triggered by the panel’s failure to agree on a deficit reduction plan.
Optimism was never high that the panel would succeed, but stock markets were still dropping at midday, with stocks off sharply as bond yields fell.
At the White House, where the president signed legislation intended to spur the hiring of veterans, Mr. Obama urged lawmakers to get back to work on economic issues in a spirit of bipartisanship, but made no direct reference to the collapse of the deficit talks over the weekend — even though some of the legislators involved were attending the signing ceremony.
The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, pointedly noted that the responsibility for getting a deal belonged to Congress, not the White House.
“They should do the right thing and come together,” Mr. Carney said. “From the beginning of this process, what the Congress needs to do to get this done has been obvious to everyone.”
At a campaign stop in New Hampshire, one of Mr. Obama’s chief Republican rivals, Mitt Romney, said Monday that what was most disappointing about the panel’s failure was “that our president has had no involvement with the process.”
“I find it extraordinary that there would be set up a committee, with such an important mission as finding a way to provide fiscal sanity in America, and with the penalty, if that fiscal sanity is not found, of a $600 billion cut to our military,” Mr. Romney said.
He added that the White House should promote legislation that would hold the military out of a set of automatic cuts, known as sequestration and divided between security and domestic programs, that are set to trigger in 2013 unless some other resolution is devised.
In a speech Monday, Newt Gingrich, another Republican candidate for president, called the failure of the committee “good for America.”
While Congress is on break for the Thanksgiving holidays, many members, especially Republicans, turned their attention Monday to the looming Pentagon cuts. As part of the legislation written to raise the debt ceiling earlier this year, a failure of the committee to reach a deal would result in $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts in domestic and military programs over 10 years, starting in January, 2013 — after elections that could reshape the Congress and perhaps replace the president.
“We need to more appropriately allocate spending reductions,” Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said in an interview. “Congress could alter the sequestration. I am hoping for that.”
On Monday, several members from both parties met in the office of Senator John Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a committee member, at his behest, along with Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a Republican member. While the meeting began as a bipartisan affair, the Republicans left the Democrats to ponder their fate alone midday.
With the apparent collapse of the deficit reduction committee, Republicans in Congress were looking for other ways to rein in federal spending. Some House Republicans have discussed the possibility of seeking a vote on deficit reduction proposals advanced in the last month by Republican members of the committee. While such proposals would have no future in the Senate, they would give House Republicans an opportunity to show their commitment to fiscal restraint.
In the next month, lawmakers face deadlines to deal with several pressing issues: extension of a payroll tax holiday, extension of jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed, a 27 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors and relief from the alternative minimum tax.
Items on this list carry big price tags. When Congress addressed them last year, the Congressional Budget Office said the temporary reduction in the payroll taxes would cost more than $110 billion, while the temporary extension of jobless benefits cost $55 billion and the remedy for the alternative minimum tax cost more than $130 billion. Shielding doctors from pending cuts in their Medicare fees would cost at least $20 billion to $30 billion.
Already some Republicans were saying Monday that they would try to spare the massive and automatic cuts to the Pentagon that will be triggered by the panel’s failure to agree on a deficit reduction plan.
Optimism was never high that the panel would succeed, but stock markets were still dropping at midday, with stocks off sharply as bond yields fell.
At the White House, where the president signed legislation intended to spur the hiring of veterans, Mr. Obama urged lawmakers to get back to work on economic issues in a spirit of bipartisanship, but made no direct reference to the collapse of the deficit talks over the weekend — even though some of the legislators involved were attending the signing ceremony.
The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, pointedly noted that the responsibility for getting a deal belonged to Congress, not the White House.
“They should do the right thing and come together,” Mr. Carney said. “From the beginning of this process, what the Congress needs to do to get this done has been obvious to everyone.”
At a campaign stop in New Hampshire, one of Mr. Obama’s chief Republican rivals, Mitt Romney, said Monday that what was most disappointing about the panel’s failure was “that our president has had no involvement with the process.”
“I find it extraordinary that there would be set up a committee, with such an important mission as finding a way to provide fiscal sanity in America, and with the penalty, if that fiscal sanity is not found, of a $600 billion cut to our military,” Mr. Romney said.
He added that the White House should promote legislation that would hold the military out of a set of automatic cuts, known as sequestration and divided between security and domestic programs, that are set to trigger in 2013 unless some other resolution is devised.
In a speech Monday, Newt Gingrich, another Republican candidate for president, called the failure of the committee “good for America.”
While Congress is on break for the Thanksgiving holidays, many members, especially Republicans, turned their attention Monday to the looming Pentagon cuts. As part of the legislation written to raise the debt ceiling earlier this year, a failure of the committee to reach a deal would result in $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts in domestic and military programs over 10 years, starting in January, 2013 — after elections that could reshape the Congress and perhaps replace the president.
“We need to more appropriately allocate spending reductions,” Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said in an interview. “Congress could alter the sequestration. I am hoping for that.”
On Monday, several members from both parties met in the office of Senator John Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a committee member, at his behest, along with Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, a Republican member. While the meeting began as a bipartisan affair, the Republicans left the Democrats to ponder their fate alone midday.
With the apparent collapse of the deficit reduction committee, Republicans in Congress were looking for other ways to rein in federal spending. Some House Republicans have discussed the possibility of seeking a vote on deficit reduction proposals advanced in the last month by Republican members of the committee. While such proposals would have no future in the Senate, they would give House Republicans an opportunity to show their commitment to fiscal restraint.
In the next month, lawmakers face deadlines to deal with several pressing issues: extension of a payroll tax holiday, extension of jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed, a 27 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors and relief from the alternative minimum tax.
Items on this list carry big price tags. When Congress addressed them last year, the Congressional Budget Office said the temporary reduction in the payroll taxes would cost more than $110 billion, while the temporary extension of jobless benefits cost $55 billion and the remedy for the alternative minimum tax cost more than $130 billion. Shielding doctors from pending cuts in their Medicare fees would cost at least $20 billion to $30 billion.
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