Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, left, and Majority Leader Harry Reid in Washington, Feb. 27, 2013. (Kevin??A new era of outreach? President Barack Obama will join Senate Republicans at their weekly behind-closed-doors lunch next week, GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on Wednesday. Obama requested the March 14 meeting on Tuesday through his chief of staff.
?Senate Republicans welcome the president to the Capitol. And I appreciate he took my recommendation to hear from all of my members,? McConnell said in a statement.
?We promised the American people that we would cut Washington spending, and the president signed those cuts into law. We have numerous challenges facing the country, and Republicans have offered the president serious solutions to shrink Washington spending and grow the economy," the Kentucky Republican said. "And we will have an opportunity to discuss them with the president at the lunch.?
Obama last attended a Senate Republican luncheon on May 25, 2010, according to McConnell's office.
On Friday, the president met with McConnell, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Republicans broadly dismissed that discussion as an 11th-hour photo op. The two sides have been at war over painful automatic spending cuts hitting federal agencies across the board, reductions known in Washington as "sequestration."
Obama also said Friday that he would keep reaching out to Republicans in a bid to forge a "caucus of common sense" that might work to replace sequestration, which hits agencies across the board rather than making considered reductions to bloated or wasteful programs. House Republicans have charged that the White House had 18 months between the time when Obama signed the cuts into law to come up with a plan to replace them and failed to do so. That claim is untrue.
Obama has also requested a meeting with House Republicans next week, but that has yet to be scheduled, Boehner chief of staff, Mike Sommers, said in an email message to GOP lawmakers on Wednesday.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-attend-senate-gop-lunch-next-week-143007963--politics.html
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