Obama Postpones White House Crisis Meeting

Stop us if you've heard this one before: President Barack Obama today scheduled a meeting with Congressional leaders at the White House, only to delay it to give Senate leaders more time to resolve the government's twin fiscal crises. A new day or time for the meeting wasn't announced, but Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden are expected to be in attendance. According to the AP, it will be the first time all of those leaders have met at the same time since Oct. 2.

Meanwhile, Reid says that his own talks with McConnell are "getting closer" and that while nothing had been finalized, he hopes to have a draft in time for the White House meeting, CNN reports. The White House says Obama will use the meeting to call for an end to the government shutdown and an increase in the debt limit, but that he "will not pay ransom" for either. Obama warned that "if Republicans aren't willing to set aside some of their partisan concerns ... we stand a good chance of defaulting." He decried the crisis as "completely unnecessary." (More Barack Obama stories.)