The dinner lasted for more than two hours. Hopeful tone at Obama-GOP dinner

Republican senators emerged from a meeting Wednesday night with President Barack Obama optimistic about the road forward toward a grand bargain to solve the country’s financial problems.

Obama and the group of 12 senators met for more than two hours at the Jefferson Hotel in Washington D.C., and talked about the debt, deficits and taxes. It was one of the first meetings Obama has held with rank-and-file lawmakers in years.


Next week Obama is scheduled to descend on Capitol Hill to meet with House and Senate Republicans as a whole. He has also been calling Republican members for the past week, some of the most broad outreach from the president toward the opposition party.

( Also on POLITICO: John Boehner embraces President Obama-GOP meetings)

The outreach comes less than a week after automatic spending cuts known as the sequester have been implemented and a stopgap spending resolution to fund the government is pending. But Obama and Republicans have been at a total stalemate over a big deal to solve the nation’s problems, with Republicans demanding more cuts to entitlements programs and Democrats urging more tax revenues.

The dinner, which was requested by Obama, was organized by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and included 11 additional Republican members of the upper chamber: Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), John McCain (Ariz.), Dan Coats (Ind.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Mike Johanns (Neb.), Pat Toomey (Pa.), Ron Johnson (Wis.), John Hoeven (N.D.) and Saxby Chambliss (Ga.).

Hoeven said the meeting was “very candid” and covered several topics including the budget and the sequester.

( PHOTOS: Obama’s dinner with Republicans)

“Really where we focused is how we bring together people in a bipartisan way to address the debt and the deficit and that means tax reform and that means entitlement reform in a way that protects and preserves Social Security and Medicare but truly addresses debt and the deficit,” Hoeven said.

While not zeroing in on one issue deeply, Hoeven said everyone talked policy.

“We talked about that there really is an opportunity over the next four to five months as we work through the budget process and facing the debt ceiling again to come together and find a way to address on a long-term basis the debt and the deficit,” he said.

Graham exited the meeting first and took only one shouted question from across the street about it.

“Great,” he shouted back.

McCain largely declined to talk about the content of the meeting, but described it as positive.

“It was a very enjoyable meeting,” McCain said. He added, “I don’t discuss my conversations with the president.”

Corker was similarly tight-lipped, telling CBS’s “This Morning” that “everyone’s agreed they wouldn’t give a readout on policy issues discussed.”

Toomey and Corker said Thursday they welcomed the president’s decision to stop trying to make his case with the public and instead begin winning over Republicans.

“I would suggest that the approach of campaigning in America and really being quite confrontational hasn’t been working so well and so I’m hoping that this is a new approach on the part of the president to reach out, to have some dialogue to see if there is common ground,” the Pennsylvanian said on “Fox & Friends.” “Because we’ve got some really serious challenges and so much we could accomplish if we can find that common ground.”

“I think the fact that, you know, this is being covered so much indicates that it is a pretty big change,” Corker said on CBS. “We look at it as pretty normal, but, you know, everybody’s kind of fascinated. I think it’s a great move. Look, John McCain sat beside him last night and there was a lot of joviality.”

Coburn was harsher on the president, arguing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the outreach came far too late, and after a lot of damage done.

“It’s something that should have happened years ago, which is part of the problems of this administration,” said Coburn, who worked with Obama on legislation in the Senate. “And it’s going to take a while to build the kind of confidence and trust that’s needed. If you’ve had years of having somebody put their finger in your eye and question your motivations and ascribe to you things that aren’t accurate, that takes some healing, and I think it was very good for the president to have that dinner. And I think he needs to do a whole lot more of that, because relationships matter and building trust and confidence and knowing you’re not going to get gamed is the way you get something down for the American people.”

“This is the first real outreach in four-plus years that the President’s made to the minority party,” Coburn added.

And indicating any breakthrough is still off in the distance, Coburn said he thought the president’s idea of “what’s been accomplished this far” on deficit reduction was “totally bogus.”

Johanns said the president shared the same goal as the senators, to “stop careening from crisis to crisis.”

“I’ve always [been] optimistic about [a grand bargain]. I’m hopeful it happens before I leave,” said Johanns who is retiring in 2016.

Every member leaving the meeting described it as positive, saying that the session addressed the issues that Republicans are concerned about.

“It was talks of trying to deal with the big issues we have fiscally. It was not about the sequester,” Corker said. “You know meetings like this are helpful and I think they build relationships. I think they flesh out, you know, what people are thinking and what some of the obstacles have been. I think they help lay a broad parameter of a way forward.”

He described the dinner’s tone as friendly and sociable.

“It was more of a relationship building. There was certainly lots of discussions of lots of issues,” Corker told POLITICO. “It was as social a meeting as you would find anywhere.”

Toomey warned it was still going to take a lot to get both sides together.

“I remain hopeful, but we’ve got an awful lot of work to do to get something that would reach that description,” he told POLITICO. “It was very cordial. I thought it was constructive.”

A senior White House official also described the meeting as positive.

“The president greatly enjoyed the dinner and had a good exchange of ideas with the senators,” the official told a pool reporter.

Police had shut down blocks surrounding the hotel, and tourists and spectators huddled on the sidewalk to get a glimpse. A small contingent of reporters waited in the rain to greet the senators when they departed.

So who picked up the bill? It was only confusion of the night.

The White House told a pool reporter that Obama paid for dinner out of his own pocket.

When asked by reporters afterward, Hoeven said that the check was divided a few ways. His office then clarified that it was Obama who paid the tab.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed a quote from Sen. Bob Corker to Sen. Pat Toomey.

Kevin Robillard and Kevin Cirilli contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Nick Gass @ 03/06/2013 10:00 PM CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed a quote from Sen. Bob Corker to Sen. Pat Toomey.