Source: Reid Praised Cantor At First White House Debt Meeting

Following several days of contentious meetings between the White House and lawmakers in Washington over what to do about the debt ceiling, the verbal sparring from those sessions spilled onto the Senate floor Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, blasted House Majority leader Eric Cantor, R-VA, calling him "childish" and intimating that the Virginia Republican shouldn't even be a part of the negotiations.

But a GOP aide tells Fox that at the White House debt meetings on July 7th, where the president first discussed the "grand bargain," Reid was much more conciliatory toward Cantor.

The president is reported to have gone around the room, asking everyone what they thought of the broader plan. Most in the room were for it, except Cantor.

The GOP aide said Cantor told the president he couldn't support it because he believed it included a tax hike.

At the end of the meeting, Reid is reported to have gone over to Cantor and told him that while he didn't know him very well, he appreciated his candor and thanked him for "being the only one to have the guts to be honest in this room."

A Reid spokesman acknowledged that the Majority Leader once had high hopes that Cantor would rise to the occasion and, "demonstrate the courage and ability to forge a bipartisan deal that would cut our nation's deficit."

But the spokesman added, "After seeing Eric Cantor's performance over the last few days, Senator Reid is disappointed to see that Eric Cantor has demonstrated neither that courage nor that ability, and has instead been nothing but a disruptive force over the course of these negotiations."