(CNN) -- House Republicans won't support raising the federal government's borrowing limit without new spending cuts from the Obama administration, and the White House risks an unprecedented U.S. default by refusing, House Speaker John Boehner said Sunday.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a tea
party-backed Republican seen as the architect of the new impasse,
told
CNN that many previous Congresses have attached conditions to debt-ceiling
increases and accused Obama of hyping the risks of a default. He said
Republicans should demand "some significant structural plan and reduce
government spending" as a condition of raising the borrowing limit, as well as
"ways to mitigate the harms from Obamacare."
After soaring to more than $1.4
trillion in 2009, the annual federal budget deficit was expected to shrink below
$650 billion in 2013, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
But the total federal debt is nearly $17 trillion and is expected to go up by
another $6 trillion by 2023, the CBO predicts.
Among the reasons for the
shrinking deficits are increased tax collections since January, when Bush-era
tax cuts for top earners and a temporary cut in Social Security withholding were
allowed to expire. Boehner said that's why he won't accept tax increases in any
deal.
"The president got $650 billion
of new revenues on January the first ... Now, it's time to talk about the
spending problem," he said.