Top House Republicans pressed President Barack Obama Wednesday for more leadership and a detailed plan on budget cuts, with one leading lawmaker accusing him of distorting a Republican health care proposal at the center of the divide with Democrats over spending. 
 
 House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, second from right, accompanied by, from left: House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of Calif.; House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va.; and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers,... (Associated Press) 
 
 House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, center, speaks to reporters outside the White House in Washington, Wednesday, June 1, 2011, after House Republicans met with President Barack Obama regarding the debt... (Associated Press) 
 
 White House press secretary Jay Carney said the meeting was productive despite the absence of any signs of progress. He also made clear that Obama has no intention of letting up on his assertions that Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to send future government health care recipients into the private insurance marketplace will transform Medicare. Medicare is the government health care program for the elderly. 
 
 "He doesn't believe that we need to end Medicare as we know it," Carney said at a White House briefing, about an hour after the meeting between Obama and House Republicans. 
 
 The White House session came as the Republicans sought to build pressure on Obama for trillions in spending cuts in exchange for any increase in the government's ability to borrow. 
 
 Afterward, dozens of rank-and-file Republican lawmakers streamed out of the the White House and into a caravan of blue buses waiting for them, while members of the Republican leadership stopped on the driveway to speak to reporters and camera crews awaiting them in under a steaming sun. 
 
 It was hard to see any concrete progress from a meeting that, based on descriptions by both sides, amounted to a face-to-face recitation of each side's positions, but no breakthrough on how to reach a debt-reduction deal. The talks came as an Aug. 2 deadline approaches for the federal government to raise the debt limit or go into unprecedented default. 
 
 According to a Republican official briefed on the meeting, Republican leaders told Obama that he had not put a specific plan for spending cuts on the table. They brought up a speech he gave in April in which he called for deficit reduction totaling $4 trillion through spending cuts, tax increases and other measures. The Republicans said a speech isn't a plan. 
 
 Ryan, who heads the House Budget Committee, had attended the speech only to hear Obama excoriate his Medicare proposal. On Wednesday the congressman told the president he had viewed that as a sign that Obama was thinking about the November 2012 elections and wanted fellow Democrats to turn up the political heat, according to the Republican official. 
 
 Obama is running for a second four-year term in the elections and cutting government spending and reducing the spiraling U.S. debt are expected to be major issues in the campaign. 
 
 Ryan said he explained his Medicare plan to the president to get him to stop mischaracterizing it. Obama and Democrats routinely label Ryan's proposal a "voucher" plan that would undo Medicare. 
 
 "It's been misdescribed by the president and many others and so we simply described to him precisely what it is we've been proposing so that he hears from us how our proposal works so that in the future he won't mischaracterize it," Ryan said. 
 
 Vice President Joe Biden is leading talks on reaching spending cuts alongside the measure raising the debt ceiling in advance of the Aug. 2 deadline set by the Treasury Department. 
 
 If no action is taken by then, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has warned, the government could default on its obligations and risk turmoil that might plunge the nation into another recession or even an economic depression. 
 
 The government already has reached the limit of its borrowing authority, $14.3 trillion, and the Treasury is using a series of extraordinary maneuvers to meet financial obligations. 
 
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 Associated Press writers Ben Feller and Erica Werner contributed to this report. ||||| Republican Rep. Paul Ryan and President Obama got into a pointed exchange over GOP plans to overhaul the Medicare system, with Ryan suggesting during a private meeting at the White House that the president had engaged in "demagoguery."Obama met with members of the House Republican caucus in the East Room on Wednesday in an attempt to bridge differences over spending and the debt limit.Democrats have gained traction in the debate with Republicans by painting Ryan's Medicare proposal as a "voucher" program that would harm senior citizens. A TV ad put out by a liberal group depicts a man pushing an elderly wheelchair-bound woman off a cliff. The message is that Republicans wish to privatize Medicare.Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, got a standing ovation from his colleagues during the meeting."Hey, I'm that Ryan guy," Ryan said at the start of his remarks at the meeting, according to a Republican aide.Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) told reporters after the meeting that Ryan told Obama "we're not going to make progress on reforming Medicare unless we cut through the demagoguery on the issue."In reply, Obama "spelled out his differences and responded with the thought that if everyone would follow that, certainly he would," Goodlatte added. "Paul's point was that as president of the United States, he can take the lead in cutting through that and having a serious discussion."Later, speaking to reporters, Ryan was asked if he had told Obama that he hadn't shown leadership on budget issues."That's not exactly what I said," he responded. "I said we've got to take on this debt and if we demagogue each other at the leadership level, then we're never going to take on our debt."Ryan went on to say that Obama has "mischaracterized" his Medicare plan when talking publicly about it. So he said he explained to Obama how the plan works, in the hopes that "in the future he won't mischaracterize it.""I simply explained what our plan is, how it works," Ryan said, standing before a bank of cameras outside the White House. "It's been misdescribed by the president and many others. So we simply described to him what it is we’ve been proposing so that he hears from us how our proposal works."Did Obama agree that the Republican Medicare proposal is not a voucher plan?"He didn’t mention one way or the other," Ryan said.Obama and the House Republicans also reportedly differed over the need for government spending."The president talked about a need for us to continue to -- quote-unquote -- invest. And to a lot of us that’s code for more government spending --something we can't afford right now," said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House majority leader.Asked about the purpose of the meeting, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said: "It was an opportunity for our members to communicate directly with the president about our ideas about how to get the economy going again -- how to create jobs and solve the debt problem facing our country."I told the president one more time: This is the moment. This is the window of opportunity where we can deal with this on our terms. We can work together and solve this problem. We know what the problems are. Let’s not kick the can down the road one more time."Just before the meeting, the Treasury Department reiterated Wednesday that Aug. 2 remains the projected day the nation's debt ceiling would be breached, attempting to set in stone a drop-dead deadline as the Obama administration and congressional Republicans continue to haggle over raising the limit.The Republican-controlled House on Tuesday rejected a $2.4-trillion increase in the debt ceiling. The measure did not include any spending cuts, which Republicans and some Democrats have insisted on. Instead, the vote was designed by House GOP leaders to send a strong message to the White House that it must compromise more on deficit reduction if it wants a debt-ceiling increase."What I heard from this president is he wanted to sit down and find real cuts now," Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said after the meeting. "He said there needed to be entitlement reform. And we will work with him to those ends."peter.nicholas@latimes.comLisa Mascaro, Jim Puzzanghera and Michael A. Memoli contributed to this report.
– Republicans met with President Obama today to talk about the debt, resulting in what the Los Angeles Times describes as a "pointed exchange" between Paul Ryan and Obama. Ryan accused the president and Democrats of distorting his proposal to overhaul Medicare. "It's been misdescribed by the president and many others," he said afterward. "So we simply described to him what it is we’ve been proposing so that he hears from us how our proposal works." Other accounts had Ryan criticizing the president for a lack of leadership on the issue. But "that's not exactly what I said," Ryan added. "I said we've got to take on this debt and if we demagogue each other at the leadership level, then we're never going to take on our debt." The White House called the meeting productive even though it yielded no tangible progress on a deal, notes AP. And Obama seemed intent on continuing his attacks on Ryan's plan: "He doesn't believe that we need to end Medicare as we know it," said spokesman Jay Carney. The developments came a day after House Republicans rejected the idea of raising the debt limit.