House Speaker John Boehner twice told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to ‘go f**k’ himself last Friday after a meeting at the White House on a budget compromise to avert the fiscal cliff.
Standing in the White House lobby not far from the Oval Office, Boehner pointed his finger at Reid and sneered, ‘Go f**k yourself,’ Politico reported, citing multiple sources present.
Reid replied: ‘What are you talking about?’
House Speaker John Boehner twice told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to ‘go f**k’ himself last Friday
Boehner repeated: ‘Go f**k yourself.’
The shrewd exchange from last Friday reveals how the grueling fight over the debt ceiling, spending cuts and tax increases pervaded politics and grew sharply personal as negotiations at times seemed futile.
The animosity between the members of both parties was so high that it took 17 months to reach a deal and they still failed to meet the Dec. 31 deadline, instead coming to an agreement 12 hours and several yelling matches later.
And even with the fiscal cliff avoided, continued political brinksmanship in Washington is still likely to sap strength from the fragile economy well into 2013.
Standing in the White House lobby not far from the Oval Office, Boehner pointed his finger at Reid (pictured) and sneered, ‘Go f**k yourself’
Another standoff is likely to arrive as early as February when Congress will need to raise the $16.4 trillion federal borrowing limit so the government can keep paying its bills. House Republicans probably won’t agree to raise the debt limit without offsetting spending cuts that Democrats are sure to resist.
Obama warned Republicans late Tuesday that ‘if Congress refuses to give the United States government the ability to pay these bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy would be catastrophic, far worse than the impact of a fiscal cliff.’
Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, asked: ‘What induces the two sides to stop fighting and start compromising?’
