Politico

By JULIE MASON

The day after White House press secretary Jay Carney and Fox News reporter Ed Henry tangled over Henry's request for specifics on Obama's plan on debt limit and deficit reduction, Carney and Henry were back at it again on Wednesday.

Henry asked at the briefing when Obama's plan might be submitted to the Congressional Budget Office.

"Ed, I understand, we can do this again, OK?" Carney said. "Has the speaker of the House shown you the positions he took in detail in the negotiations that were designed actually to achieve a compromise, as opposed to having a show vote?"

"We put forward a budget, we put forward a framework," Carney said.

Questions about Obama's plan -- where is it, what's on it -- are proving tricky for the White House, because the omission is suddenly getting traction. 

"Both leaders, the senior-most Republican in the land, third in line, OK? A powerful figure with great authority sat on a room with the president of the United States and worked out a detailed compromise," Carney said. 

"It is the nature of these kinds of difficult things that you do that in a way so that you agree on the tough choices, you come out together and announce them, and you begin to make the argument," he said. "A hard argument from each person to his party, that this is what we need to do for the sake of the country."

Carney's explanation was once again that these deals have to be worked out in secret. But Henry pressed on -- why not have a senator take up Obama's detailed plan and introduce it as a bill?

"We are six days away," Henry said. 

 "Chuck -- I mean Ed, you know, the speaker walked away from this deal," Carney said.

"You say it's a great deal so put it out there," Henry said. "Let the American people -- "

"I think I've answered the question," Carney said. "I mean, I know you're creating a thing here for Fox..."

Henry, who hardly pulled punches when he sat a few seats over for CNN, chided Carney, "That's not what I'm doing. You know better than that."

The White House has previously found it useful to single out Fox, saying they don't regard the network as a traditional news organization, calling it a "wing of the Republican Party"  and equating reporters who cover the White House to Bill O'Reilly and former Fox host Glenn Beck.

Next year, Henry takes over as president of the White House Correspondents Association -- meaning ever closer dealings with the administration.

"Ed, somebody from Fox sat in a room with senior White House officials and got more detail on the president's proposal and what was agreed upon between the president and the speaker of the House than you could name me now is in any of the proposals put forward by House Republicans," Carney said. "And you know it."

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