U.S. House Speaker John Boehner said Sunday that President Barack Obama's recent outreach to lawmakers by visiting the Capitol Hill is a good thing, but Republicans can't go any further on tax increases.

"It's always a good thing to engage in more conversation, engage more members in the conversation that had not been involved up until this point," said Boehner in an interview aired Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

"But when you get down to the bottom line, the president believes that we have to have more taxes from the American people, we're not going to get very far," he said. "The president got his tax hikes on January 1. The talk about raising revenue is over. It 's time to deal with the spending problem."

His comments came after Obama's week-long effort to reach across the aisle for exchange of ideas on issues including deficit cuts. Obama met separately with Republicans and Democrats from both chambers, seeking to build a framework for a grand bargain on a deficit deal.

Boehner, a Republican from the midwestern U.S. state of Ohio, said although the United States does not face immediate debt problem, a major crisis is looming because "we have entitlement programs that are not sustainable in their current form."

While saying he has a "very good relationship" with Obama and he "absolutely" trusts him, Boehner cautioned that he was not sure whether they could come to a big agreement.

"If we do, it will be between the two parties on Capitol Hill. Hopefully we can go to conference on these budgets, and hope springs eternal in my mind," he stated.

Both the Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-dominated Senate unveiled their budget blueprints early in the past week, which showed stark differences on the approach to slash deficits. They are set to vote on their respective proposals in the upcoming week, but neither plan is expected to pass in the other chamber.

Source: Xinhuanet