Obama Meets with House Republican Leaders; Allegations of Child Torture in Syria
MALVEAUX: Here's a rundown of some of the stories that we are working on next. A young demonstrator becomes a poster child for the Syrian uprising after being tortured and killed. Then, with housing prices at new lows, is it better to buy or to rent? We're going to tell you some questions you should consider. Then, at 11:56 Eastern, when taking too many medications hurts more than helps. Our "CNN In-Depth: Medication Nation." Well, a 13-year-old boy has become the new face of the two-month- old revolution in Syria after alarming video surfaced on YouTube of the child's mutilated body. It appears to show that he was tortured before his death. And the video has angered activists and drawn sharp criticism from the United States as well.</s>HILLARY CLINTON, SECRETARY OF STATE: I, too, was very concerned by the reports about the young boy. In fact, I think what that symbolizes for many Syrians is the total collapse of any effort by the Syrian government to work with and listen to their own people.</s>MALVEAUX: CNN's Arwa Damon has been following this story for us. And a warning -- some of you may find the graphic images of injured children upsetting.</s>ARWA DAMON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On April 29th, anti-government protesters tried to break the Syrian army siege on the city of Daraa. Eyewitnesses at the time described how security forces indiscriminately opened fire on them.</s>DAMON: Dozens were killed and wounded. Countless others detained. Among them, say his family, was 13-year-old Hamza, separated from his father in the chaos. A month later, the family received their son's body, Hamza's face bloated, purple. This video posted to YouTube catalogs each of his wounds, much of it too graphic to broadcast. The narrator points out multiple gunshots before moving to his head. And even more shocking, his genitals were mutilated. CNN cannot independently verify what happened to Hamza or the authenticity of this video. After it was initially broadcast, Hamza's family was threatened. Now they are too petrified to talk, even to close friends. Razan Zaitouneh, a prominent Syrian activist who we reached via Skype, says she has no doubt it's real and that the regime had a message in releasing the boy's body.</s>RAZAN ZAITOUNEH, SYRIAN ACTIVIST: They want the people to see this. They want the people to get scared. They want the people to know that there is no red lines, everything, no matter how awful it is, could happen to their family members if they continue to participate in this revolution.</s>DAMON: But far from cowing people, the video has only made them bolder.</s>DAMON: Demonstrations to protest comes as death erupted. Even children took to the streets, risking a similar fate, vowing that his blood was not spilled in vain. Activists say they are not surprised that the regime could have committed such cruelty and claim it's not the first time a child has been targeted. This 11-year-old boy was allegedly shot in his home. This video shows the body of a child lying in the street amid intense gunfire, as others try to recover his body. And here, children lie wounded in hospital after security forces allegedly fired at their school bus. The Syrian government said Tuesday there will be an investigation into Hamza's death, but a medical examiner told Syrian TV there was no evidence the boy had been tortured, and he claimed the condition of the corpse was due to decomposition. Hamza's death has prompted international outrage. A Facebook page calling itself "We are all the martyr, the child Hamza Ali al- Khateeb" had 60,000 followers by Tuesday. The face of this 13-year- old from a village in southern Syria, now the symbol of an uprising.</s>MALVEAUX: CNN made repeated attempts to reach Syrian authorities for comment on the death of Hamza al Fatib (ph). Syrian TV also said President Assad had met members of the boy's family. We're going to get to Arwa Damon in a moment, but first I go to the White House. This is where House Republicans just wrapped up their meeting with President Obama dealing with the debt ceiling as well as spending cuts. This is Eric Cantor.</s>REP. ERIC CANTOR (R), MAJORITY LEADER: But we can also get people back to work. We know that our chairman of the Ways and Means Committee Dave Camp is hard at work at putting together a tax reform plan. I asked the president hopefully that he will work with us to do so and keep out of the discussions surrounding the debt limit and in the Biden talks, any notion that we're going continue crease taxes. It's counterintuitive to believe that you increase taxes on those individuals and entities you're expecting to create jobs.</s>REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R), MAJORITY WHIP: It's a unique opportunity where the entire conference got to convey what they're listening to across America. The president laid out from a debt discussion, but from the conference he heard about jobs. He heard about unshackling the burden of regulation on to small business to get them working again, from Wisconsin to West Virginia to members across the way. What I heard from this president, that he wanted to sit down and find real cuts now. He said there need to be entitlement reform and we will work with him towards those ends to direct when we create new jobs, put us on a path to pay off the budget, on a balanced budget, and pay down the debt, as well.</s>REP. CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS (R), WASHINGTON: I want to thank the president and the speaker for bringing us together today for this important discussion. You know, every generation of Americans has been proud to pass on a better country to the next generation. And yet for a lot of Americans right now there's a question in their gut as to whether or not our children and our grandchildren are going to have more opportunities. And the foundation that we lay for them is so important and we can't take for granted that we're just going to continue to have that strong foundation from which opportunity and innovation and ingenuity take place. Our tax policy matters. Our debt matters. Our energy policy matters. And whether it was our vote last night on the debt ceiling or the conversation today with the president about job creation, we are committed to taking the steps necessary to ensure that that next generation has more opportunities.</s>REP. JEB HENSARLING (R), FINANCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE: Any day Republicans and Democrats are actually having a dialogue, this is a good day. What the president heard from Republican members of the House is that jobs are jobs number one. That is our job. And unfortunately, the greatest impediment we have to jobs today is a lack of confidence in the future. Republican House members were able to share with the president that the job creators in our district feel that the regulatory burden, much of it coming from the president's administration, creates a lack of confidence in the future. Tax policy that is not competitive, a tax burden than is too high creates a lack of confidence. And then last but not least, a debt burden. The president heard from Republican members of the House that we know that the debt burden is going to lead to high taxes which leads to low unemployment. Unfortunately what we did not hear from the president is a specific plan of his to deal with the debt crisis that could actually be scored by the Congressional Budget Office. But we hope there's still an opportunity to work on the drivers of this debt that is costing us jobs, because Republicans know that until we have the confidence that we can solve this debt crisis by dealing with the drivers, our entitlement spending, that we're not going to get the kind of jobs that the American people want or demand.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to take a couple of questions.</s>QUESTION: Mr. Cantor, you mentioned the ADP report. Did the president have a response to that? Did he respond to your concerns?</s>CANTOR: The president admitted that we've to look at growing this economy. The discussion really focused on the philosophical difference on whether Washington should continue to pump money into the economy or we should provide an incentive for entrepreneurs and small businesses to grow. So I think the president was well aware and admitted the fact that private sector job creation is not enough. He did mention that a lot of the losses were in the public sector. Again, our message is to focus on growth in the private sector. That's how we're going to help bring down the deficit and get people back to work.</s>QUESTION: Did the president talk about additional spending?</s>CANTOR: Well, the president talked about a need for us to continue to quote, unquote, "invest" from Washington's standpoint. And to a lot of us that's code for more Washington spending, something that we can't afford right now.</s>QUESTION:  (OFF-MIKE) RYAN: That's not exactly what I said.</s>RYAN: That wasn't exactly what I said. I just 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. We have a debt crisis coming and we want to deal with this. If we want to grow jobs in the economy and we have to get our spending under control, we got to get our debt under control and if we try to demagogue each other's attempts to do that, then we're not applying the kind of political leadership we need to get this economy growing and get this debt under control. That's basically what we were saying.</s>QUESTION: Was it confrontational?</s>RYAN: No, not at all.</s>QUESTION: Did he stop calling your plan a voucher plan?</s>RYAN: I simply explained what our plan is, how it works. 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.</s>QUESTION:  (OFF-MIKE) RYAN: He didn't mention one way or the other.</s>QUESTION: What was the point of this meeting today? Was it negotiating, was it (OFF-MIKE) was it public relations?</s>REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: I think it was an opportunity for clearly our members to communicate directly with the president about our ideas, about how to get the economy going again, how to create jobs, and our ideas about how we solve the debt problem that's 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. Now's the time to deal with it. Thanks, everybody.</s>MALVEAUX: You've been watching the Republican leadership at the White House after a meeting with President Obama. A lot of things obviously for them to discuss. Our own Brianna Keilar is there, and I noticed, Brianna, standing on your perch there, that you were overlooking that group, that gaggle of Republicans who shouted a couple of questions there. And one of the things that is debatable, a contentious issue right now is whether or not to raise the debt ceiling, the amount that the United States can borrow, whether or not that's attached to spending cuts and that some of the Republicans are insisting. Where do we go from here?</s>BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: From here, and this is what we're hearing from the White House and what we're also hearing from the Hill, Suzanne, is that the future of this really rests in those negotiations that at least for now Vice President Joe Biden is leading with congressional Democrats and Republicans on deficit reduction and items that will be attached to increasing the debt ceiling. Right now the Treasury Department says the debt ceiling has to be increased by August 2nd for the U.S. not to default on its loans. So what you're hearing right now, this is, of course, the Republican side. House Republicans, almost all of them meeting with President Obama. Pretty unique situation. By my count this is the only the third time in Mr. Obama's presidency that he's met with all House Republicans. And, of course, one of the big sticking points in this, and you certainly heard Republicans say they voiced this to the president, has to do with increasing taxes. One of the things the White House would like to see is an increase on taxes of wealthy Americans and Republicans are against that. They say that's going to hurt small business, that will ultimately hurt the economy. But you have the White House saying some spending cuts but there need to be an increase in taxes. We heard from House Speaker John Boehner there, Suzanne, that this was a frank and productive meeting. I don't know if you could hear the question that I shouted at Paul Ryan.</s>MALVEAUX: I did.</s>KEILAR: I was trying to get it just how confrontational, perhaps, this meeting was. The answer to my question, I asked him if he sort of confronted the president on his leadership. He said that the point he was making that we can't demagogue, we can't get into politics, we need to solve this problem. But what we're really waiting for right now, as well, from the White House is say readout of this meeting that went on for more than an hour, almost an hour and a half. And shortly at about 12:30, we'll be getting a briefing from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. We'll be getting some answers from him on this and his side.</s>MALVEAUX: OK. Excellent, Brianna. We did see you ask that question, by the way, from up above. So that was great. Thank you very much. We're going to have more news after this quick break.