Boehner open to revenue increases but calls for significant entitlement reforms as part of debt plan

By Bobby Caina Calvan, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker John Boehner said today he is willing to entertain additional revenues as part of a plan to cut the nation’s deficit, but he declined to provide specifics.

“I do think there’s room for revenues” to be considered, the Ohio Republican said, “but there is clearly a limit to the revenues that may be available.”

Republicans have been steadfast in demanding that only spending cuts be used to narrow the nation’s projected budget deficit. A bipartisan supercommittee is required to identify $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade but is bogged down over whether to include revenue increases as part of the equation.

Boehner, in behind-the-scenes negotiations with President Obama this summer, reportedly agreed to consider $800 billion in revenue increases as part of a $4 trillion comprehensive plan that included changes to Medicare and Social Security. Those talks faltered.

Last week, Democrats on the debt panel offered to reduce Medicare spending, in exchange for new tax revenues of up to $1.3 trillion. Republicans promptly rejected the idea. Republicans had countered with their own plan – without raising taxes – but was in turn rejected by Democratic leaders.

Boehner, in a roundtable with reporters today, said he would “respect the work” of the debt-slashing supercommittee, adding that “it would be unfair” not do so.

The panel, which includes Senator John Kerry, has until Nov. 23 to present a deficit-cutting plan to Congress amid growing anxiety that the rifts within the committee might be too wide.

Boehner said that it was important for the bipartisan 12-member panel to succeed in trimming at least $1.2 trillion from the nation’s deficit. But he stopped short of saying whether any plan coming from the supercommittee would receive an automatic stamp of approval.

Democrats must be willing to put Medicare and other expensive entitlement programs on the table, he said. “Without real reform on the entitlement side, how do you put revenues on the table?”

Boehner declined to get into specifics about what revenues he would be willing to allow, nor did he cite specific cuts.

If the debt committee does not reach a deal palatable to the rest of Congress, automatic cuts will be triggered in 2013 in spending for defense and domestic programs.

Earlier this week, the panel was urged by members of a now-disbanded bipartisan presidential debt commission to make deeper cuts than the $1.2 trillion threshold, or the country would again find itself in the same predicament. That could cause the public and the international community, amid global economic upheaval, to lose faith in Washington’s ability to lead and solve the country’s problems, the panel was told.