Harry Reid, still reeling from his failure to kill the surge in Iraq, is planning to kill the Boehner bill tonight if the bill passes the House today (update — as of 4:30 not clear the bill will pass the House):
“Today the House of Representatives will vote on Speaker Boehner’s short-term plan to raise the debt ceiling,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “As soon as the House completes its vote tonight, the Senate will move to take up that bill. It will be defeated. No Democrat will vote for a short-term Band-Aid that would put our economy at risk and put the nation back in this untenable situation a few short months from now.”
Often scheduling a vote in the Senate requires more than a two day wait. But to expedite the process, and to prove as swiftly as possible that Boehner’s plan is DOA in the Senate, Reid will move to table the bill. All Democrats will vote to table the legislation, Reid has said, and then it’s on to the next step.
That would leave no pending legislation to address the debt ceiling. This apparently is how Democrats measure success.
The next step for for Republicans in the House should be? (Poll open until 8 p.m. tonight, unless developments dictate a sooner close):
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Comments
Okay can I vote ‘none of the above’ and have the House send a new adjusted bill with either cuts to match 2008 expenditures or alternatively take a trillion in ‘this year cuts’, send it to Reid, then double that spending cut every time he sends it back.
The house immediately should then begin to work on another bill that falls between the first and second house bills and send it to the Senate.
I don’t like any of the options in the poll. Republicans should give them what they want. Pass the $2T extension to the debt limit with $3T in spending cuts. Reduce the baseline across the board.
Then, when they kill that too, send them another one. And another one. And another one. The numbers almost don’t matter. Raise the limit, cut the spending. (Don’t raise taxes). Do it over and over, forever if necessary.
Sooner or later Reid (and maybe even Obama, though I doubt that) will realize that if they don’t pass SOMETHING, they’re screwing themselves.
Great idea. Let the Senate and President paint themselves into a corner.
You and irv seem to get it. This is about much more than the debt limit. This is about who wins in 2012. Republicans have to play this right or Obama wins reelection.
The process you describe/endorse would put the onus on the Democrats.
I like the concept – reinforce over & over the Democrats aren’t “for” anything.
Execution will be a problem, though – at some point, Boehner won’t be able to get the votes to send another bill over to the Senate. At some point, the House will say “To hell with you, Harry Reid … we’re not doing a damn thing until you define what you’re ‘for’.”
Lock the door and turn off the lights and refuse to go any further until Obummer presents his plan that they keep telling us “everyone knows about”….I wonder who “everyone” is?
Tomorrow, re-introduce the CC&B bill as the only serious plan that addresses the issues highlighted by S&P, has been overwhelmingly approved by both parties in the House and whose details have been publicly disclosed. At least go down with a real proposal that history will confirm was the only serious and viable option. Fight!
What he said.
But cut even more. The first CCB is not dead in the Senate, just tabled. It can be brought back for a vote.
Boehner’s crap sandwich is alot like Reid’s crap sandwich. Obama will tell them to combine the two crap sandwiches into a Super Sized crap sandwich.
In other words, the only adult in the room will be lauded for his crap sandwich making skills by breaking the impasse created by those crazy and deranged extremists in the House who were intent on not making the nation eat a crap sandwich.
As much as Obama’s people have said they won’t unilaterally raise the debt limit themselves, I see this as his preferred option all the long. Consider for a moment that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi broke the law in not passing a budget for 2010 and 2011. Then consider that Congress is at an impasse in raising the debt ceiling at the hand of Reid. It doesn’t matter that it was Democrats who did this. In other words, Congress has failed it’s Constitutional duties thus forcing Obama to act as a savior of the country because the rules no longer work. No where in the Constitution does it say the POTUS can not raise the debt limit, it only says what Congress is “supposed” to do and it will be argued that barring specific language prohibiting the POTUS from any action, the POTUS as deemed necessary can do what he needs to do to ensure Domestic Tranquility.
This is how dictatorships are born, the usurper in the absence of others following the rules takes their place at the head of a leaderless government. This plan has been 3 years in the making carefully crafted to produce this crisis. What did Rahm Emanuel say? “Never let a crisis go to waste.” In a moment of Projection, did not some Dems say the GOP was attempting to install a dictatorship?
This is a very dangerous time, the question now is does Obama and his allies really believe the country will go along with his slight of hand (ruse) or will there be a power struggle.
Why are we operating under the premise that there must be legislation to address the debt ceiling?
If Boehner is successful at passing this second bill through his chamber that’s two more than Reid has passed. So far the effort has been all Boehner’s. Boehner ought to take the weekend to let the supposed deadline loom closer and judge then just how fluid the Democrats become as the deadline nears. As of right now there’s not much more he can do than wait and react.
Right, and then they amend the bill, take it to conference, come to a compromise, and take it back to the house, where the Wicket Witch of the West will get all of her monkeys to vote yes, and it will pass. Unless all the GOP vote against it and that will never happen.
Sit Pat, let them sweat.
“Do nothing until the Senate passes a bill”
Make the *Senate* pass a spending bill first???? I once read something somewhere…. ah, yes, this old thing:
Article. I. Section. 7.
All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
Who cares about antiques….
Senate could untable the bill, proposed amendments and send it back to the House. No?
That would be fine.
I think Reid is very good at this legislative chicken and also more than willing to contradict himself. Thus, by declaring that the bill will be DOA in the Senate, he strengthens the hand of House Republicans who don’t like the bill (“But Speaker, why should I change my position and tick off my constituents to be yes vote number 216 for a bill that will be history tomorrow?”). If it fails the House, Reid has an 11th hour shot at persuading Boehner to deliver Republican votes for a Reid-Boehner “compromise” bill thaf would get House Dem votes too.
If the Boehner bill should pass, Harry can fulfill his threat by immediately tabling it, giving his Dems the chance to go on the record against it. Then he can offer Boehner the same 11th hour deal as above with more sweeteners for Boehner since he will be backing off a plan he twisted GOP arms to pass.
In a pinch, I think everyone will resurrect a version of McConnell’s fallback — raise the debt limit temporarily with the hard core of spending cuts everyone can agree on. I bet that is what Biden and McConnell are talking about. Won’t that mean Obama will have to backtrack on his adamant refusal to entertain a short-term fix? Yes, but he can easily take credit for his own lofty willingness to compromise and a Biden-McConnell provenance for a deal would enable him to take credif for beating back the House extremist horde and saving the nation from ruin.