G.O.P. Spoils for a Debt Fight Obama Wants to Sidestep

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR, NYT

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s eyes narrowed late Tuesday as he looked into the cameras and warned Republicans that he had no intention of ever getting pulled into another negotiation over raising the nation’s borrowing limit.

“I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills that they’ve already racked up through the laws that they passed,” the president said, pausing to repeat himself. “We can’t not pay bills that we’ve already incurred.”

But it is not clear exactly how Mr. Obama can avoid engaging in just such a tug of war.

In the wake of the president’s victory on taxes over the New Year’s holiday, Republicans in Congress are betting that by refusing to unconditionally raise the $16.4 trillion debt ceiling, they can force Mr. Obama to the bargaining table on spending cuts and issues like reform of Medicare and Social Security.

That would inevitably reprise the bitter clash over the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011, when the government came close to shutting down before lawmakers and the president agreed to a $1.2 trillion package of spending cuts in exchange for Republican agreement to raise the debt ceiling by about the same amount.

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