By Craig Gilbert

Meeting today with President Obama, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said he and his GOP colleagues tried to communicate to the President that “if he decides to step up to the plate in good faith,  you’ve got a unified Republican conference that wants to work with him and actually accomplish something.”

Obama’s White House meeting with Senate Republicans took place in advance of the looming debate over raising the federal debt ceiling. GOP lawmakers are demanding major commitments on spending cuts in exchange for their votes. Senators who were in the meeting Thursday described it as positive rather than contentious. 

Johnson said the position of most Republicans is that tax hikes are off the table, while on the spending side, “everything has to be on the table, I mean everything.”

The meeting earlier today lasted a little more than an hour.

“The President has all along said all kinds of things I would agree with. The disappointment is a lot of times, actions don’t match the words. He pointed out where there will probably be differences. We all kind of recognize that,” said Johnson in an interview afterward. “I’m hoping he understands how Republicans want to work with him, how seriously we view the problem.”

Johnson said he hoped the debt-ceiling debate “is the moment we can utilize to hopefully galvanize public opinion” to make structural changes in federal spending and tax policy.

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