482 Boehner Lays Out Path on Debt Limit By CARL HULSE

MAY 9, 2011, 4:49 PM

House Speaker John A. Boehner plans to tell the Economic Club of New York on Monday night that an increase in the federal debt limit should be accompanied by spending cuts that exceed any rise in borrowing power.

“Without significant spending cuts and reforms to reduce our debt, there will be no debt limit increase,” Mr. Boehner says in excerpts of his remarks released by his office Monday afternoon. “And the cuts should be greater than the accompanying increase in debt authority the president is given. We should be talking about cuts of trillions, not just billions.”

The administration has not specified the amount of the increase it is seeking in the debt limit, but the remarks represented Mr. Boehner’s clearest statement to date on what he is seeking in exchange for Republican votes to raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit by the administration’s August deadline.

In the speech, Mr. Boehner also throws cold water on the push by some Senate Democrats and President Obama for “triggers’’ that prompt automatic spending reductions if Congress and the White House do not meet targets for lowering the deficit.

Mr. Boehner said the reductions should be “actual cuts and program reforms, not broad deficit or debt targets that punt the tough questions to the future.”

He added, “And with the exception of tax hikes — which will destroy jobs — everything is on the table.”

Despite warnings from Wall Street and elsewhere that a failure to raise the debt limit could have dire results for the nation’s economy, Mr. Boehner says raising the ceiling without new spending controls would be more risky.

“It’s true that allowing America to default would be irresponsible,” he said in the excerpts. “But it would be more irresponsible to raise the debt ceiling without simultaneously taking dramatic steps to reduce spending and reform the budget process.

“To increase the debt limit without simultaneously addressing the drivers of our debt — in defiance of the will of our people — would be monumentally arrogant and massively irresponsible,” he said.