The Hill News

Democrats revived on Wednesday the same line of attack against House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in the fight over the debt ceiling that they used against the GOP leader in the fight over 2011 spending.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the lawmaker in charge of Democrats' messaging in the upper chamber, accused Boehner of being beholden to the Tea Party amid a report that Boehner's sought consultation with Wall Street officials ahead of an upcoming fight to raise the debt limit.

"The Speaker seems to be testing out how far he can venture onto a frozen lake before the ice breaks," Schumer said in a statement. "Messing around with the debt ceiling just to satisfy the Tea Party will lead to higher interest rates and an economic cataclysm."

The attack is, in some ways, virtually indistinguishable from the line of argument Democrats, chiefly Schumer, leveled against Boehner for weeks in the fight over funding government for the remainder of t! his fiscal year. Democrats often accused Boehner of being excessively beholden to lawmakers allied with the Tea Party for insisting on deeper spending cuts than Democrats had preferred.

For his part, Boehner's been saying for months now that he felt as though it was Republicans' obligation to vote and raise the debt ceiling. (Some more conservative lawmakers have said they'll vote against it.) But Boehner's also said that the vote would have to be paired with serious fiscal reforms, prompting his reported outreach to Wall Street over how far the GOP could stretch negotiations before endangering financial markets.

"We do not want to default on our debt. We should not default on our debt. These are obligations of the federal government," Boehner said Monday on Fox News. "But having said that, we're just not going to do the typical Washington thing, roll over, increase the debt limit, without addressing the underlying problems."