Vote delayed as GOP seeks support

Thursday, July 28, 2011

WASHINGTON (AP) — An intense endgame at hand, House Republican leaders struggled late into the night Thursday to quell a revolt by conservatives and pass legislation to avert a threatened government default and slice federal spending by nearly $1 trillion.

As time for a vote slid by, the White House poked fun at Republicans led by Speaker John Boehner, who has become President Barack Obama’s principal antagonist in a contentious era of divided government. And Senate Democrats pledged to scuttle Boehner’s bill — if it ever got to them — to force a final compromise.

After hours of routine debate, the GOP leadership abruptly sent word that further work would be put off on the bill to raise the nation’s debt limit by next Tuesday to allow the government to keep borrowing and pay its bills. Hours after that, one official said leaders were contemplating unspecified changes but offered no further details.

Boehner summoned a string of Republican critics of the bill to his office.

Asked what he and the speaker had talked about, Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said, “I think that’s rather obvious. .. There’s negotiations going on.”

Based on public statements by lawmakers themselves, it appeared that five of some two dozen holdouts were from South Carolina. The state is also represented by Sen. Jim DeMint, who has solid ties to tea party groups and is a strong critic of compromising on the debt issue.

A few first-term conservatives slipped into a small chapel a few paces down the hall from the Capitol Rotunda as they contemplated one of the most consequential votes of their careers.

Asked if he was seeking divine inspiration, Rep. Tim Scott, R-S.C., said that had already happened. “I was leaning no and now I am a no.”

Many more congregated in the office of the chief GOP vote counter, California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, perhaps drawn to the 19 boxes of pizza that were rolled in. Boehner joined them but did not speak to reporters.

“Clock ticks towards August 2, House is naming post offices, while leaders twist arms for a pointless vote. No wonder people hate Washington,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tweeted.

Earlier, Boehner had exuded optimism.

“Let’s pass this bill and end the crisis,” said the president’s principal Republican antagonist in a new and contentious era of divided government. “It raises the debt limit and cuts government spending by a larger amount.”

President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the measure, and in debate on the House floor, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida savaged it as a “Republican plan for default.” She said the GOP hoped to “hold our economy hostage while forcing an ideological agenda” on the country.

Despite the sharp rhetoric, there were signs that gridlock might be giving way.

“Around here you’ve got to have deadlock before you have breakthrough,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. “We’re at that stage now.”

Wall Street suffered fresh losses as Congress struggled to break its long gridlock. The Dow Jones industrial average was down for a fifth straight session.

The Treasury Department moved ahead with plans to hold its regular weekly auction of three-month and six-month securities on Monday. Yet officials offered no information on what steps would be taken if Congress failed to raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt limit by the following day.

Without signed legislation by Aug. 2, the Treasury will not have enough funds to pay all the nation’s bills. Administration officials have warned of potentially calamitous effects on the economy if that happens — a spike in interest rates, a plunge in stock markets and a tightening in the job market in a nation already struggling with unemployment over 9 percent.

White House press secretary Jay Carney outlined White House compromise terms: “significant deficit reduction, a mechanism by which Congress would take on the tough issues of tax reform and entitlement reform and a lifting of the debt ceiling beyond ... into 2013.”

The last point loomed as the biggest obstacle.

The House bill cuts spending by $917 billion over a decade, principally by holding down costs for hundreds of government programs ranging from the Park Service to the Agriculture Department and foreign aid.

It also provides an immediate debt limit increase of $900 billion, which is less than half of the total needed to meet Obama’s insistence that there be no replay of the current crisis in the heat of the 2012 election campaigns.

An additional $1.6 trillion in borrowing authority would be conditioned on passage of The endgame at hand, House Republicans struggled Thursday to pass legislation to prevent a looming government default while slicing nearly $1 trillion from federal spending. Senate Democrats pledged to scuttle the bill — if it got to them — in hopes of forcing a final compromise.

As afternoon debate headed toward evening, GOP leaders ordered an unexplained halt on the measure and Speaker John Boehner summoned a string of recalcitrant rank-and-file Republicans to his office.

Despite the sharp rhetoric, there were signs that gridlock might be giving way.

“Around here you’ve got to have deadlock before you have breakthrough,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. “We’re at that stage now.”

Wall Street suffered fresh losses as Congress struggled to break its long gridlock. The Dow Jones industrial average was down for a fifth straight session.

More like this story

lakonik 1 year, 9 months ago

The Establishment is finally getting the point. The US deserves to default if it cannot make the necessary spending cuts. 1 in 7 Americans work for a government entity. Wake up, people, and realize how your monetary system works. It is not about Republicrats or Demicans. The "tea-party" holdouts in the House are admirable for doing what is right. This system has strayed so far from what is an efficient allocation of labor to a system that is governed by corruption, nepotism, cronyism, and so on. It is quickly becoming a feudal system in disguise. Things must change....now.

moneybags 1 year, 9 months ago

You do realize we actually exceeded our debt limit in 2009 under a Democratic Congress and barely a word was said. Amazingly the treasury found a $150 billion just laying around through questionable actions that they could supposedly use - and Obama never threatened to not pay grandma SS as he did this time around. This whole episode is such a joke in how the media has portrayed the Republican House as obstructionists when it was the Senate that can't get a bill through.

cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-5987341-503544.html

NoMoBigBro 1 year, 9 months ago

So what your saying hkchas is that too much of our monetary system is tied to the whims of government?

3blindmice 1 year, 9 months ago

is it true there is a tea party member that would benefit it the us defaults? is it true this person has invested heavily by betting the us will default and stands to make hundreds of thousands? would this not be considered conflict of interest?

the tea party are nothing but anarchists who want nothing more than to destroy this country. they are a offshoot of wealthy republicans who want to steal from the only people in this country that pay taxes, working families. thank goodness americans finally have wised up their true intentions

John 1 year, 9 months ago

"The tea party are your neigbors. They aren't rich." = Rich people cannot be a member of the Tea Party group? Basing that statement on what?

"The tea party are your neigbors. They aren't rich. They are America." = Rich people cannot be a member of the Tea Party group AND not only that BUT in order to be America[n] one cannot be rich?

Lefties cannot be America[n]?

This is some sick dialogue.

lakonik 1 year, 9 months ago

Unfortunately, many of you have no familiarity with the Austrian school of economics or libertarianism. If you are a government employee, you probably do not even have an unbiased opinion on these issues. Government spending is inherently UNPRODUCTIVE. It is a necessary evil that must be minimized.

John 1 year, 9 months ago

Absotively!

tonto 1 year, 9 months ago

Some of us are familiar with that school of thought. The Austrian school of economics is a misnomer created in the 1700's by philosophers. It has continued virtually unchanged since then, oblivious to the modern application of mathematics and computer simulations to economic theory.

The Austrian school is not very well respected by people who have any formal economics education, since its principals are based on the contention that human behavior is unpredictable and economic behavior is a collection of human behaviors. In that respect it is the opposite of what is generally termed analytical and scientific economics, and is most analogous to the "irreducible complexity" argument of intelligent design as the opposite of the scientifically derived theory of evolution.

Austrian philosophy is not useful for creating analyzing policy - what it does is provide a philosophical backup argument for a policy choice that you already made for political reasons. It's nice for name-dropping to an audience of rubes as well.

Gabrielle 1 year, 9 months ago

lol

Gabrielle 1 year, 9 months ago

its great to read you laughing, hkchs.....what color is the moon?

lakonik 1 year, 9 months ago

Modern applications of mathematics and computer simulations can provide much insight into human behavior, but within any distribution, there are outliers. No system is perfect and human behavior is not 100% predictable. In your world, you are about to experience the sort of anomaly that will make you question much of the formal economic establishment, especially the central planning as taught by Keynes and Friedman. It is quite obvious, that while you feel empowered by your stochastic modeling prowess, you turn a blind eye to the problems posed by, for example, Nassim Taleb. I can tolerate outlier events, but not within the context of contrived mathematically-derived policies which aim to dictate social behavioral by unnecessarily exploiting particular segments of society. At some level, complexity is a tax on society and deliberate attempt to mask basic truth.

You know very well what I mean by Austrian School of Economists such as Hayek. I am not here to compare IQ scores or to debate semantics.

tonto 1 year, 9 months ago

lakonik, you are probably smart enough but your misuse of jargon is making your posts hard to follow.

asb 1 year, 9 months ago

Regardless of spending and revenue, the mechanics of debt payment must be met. Using the debt ceiling as a political lever is the same as not funding ongoing military actions. You can debate a particular military action, but once you're in it, lives depend on it, so fund it. This is like driving until you run out of gas in a snowstorm just to see exactly what your mileage is. If the government is spending too much, slow it down. If the economy sputters, speed it up. If you have to borrow to meet your commitments and to invest in your future, and every part of every economy does, the mechanical processes need to be adhered to. As partisan as our congress has been at various time, including pre-civil war, the mechanics of debt have always been met. It is irresponsible to hold America's and the world's economies hostage to a politically motivated tantrum. If the tea party nitwits now represent America, and this is how they're going to act, then Idocy reigns. Fix the debt ceiling, THEN argue about spending and revenue. BTW Grace, the tea party crowd ARE a wealthier demographic than you claim; they've got their's and they want to keep it, with little thought as to how they do it. Because they've had it easy they think government is trivial. They recruit out of fear and hate but they're driving a bus with bad steering and loose wiring.

asb 1 year, 9 months ago

Most Dems, teapartiers and Republicans work hard, and few of any of them are antiAmerican, that's your rhetoric. The Dems have offered spending cuts in the trillions, but they insist that recent tax breaks to the rich be tapped to help balance the budget. The Right is being greedy and trying to take advantage of their extremists wins last year. I'm not misinforming about the extremist right, they are hiding behind fiscal rhetoric while attacking the social fabric of support that America is respected for around the world. Spending too much? Fine, cut. Debt too high? Fine, get back some of the handout Bush made to the wealthiest, or not, but do what every congress in history has done, manage the technical debt process. We cannot afford right-wing tantrums.

jctea 1 year, 9 months ago

This article is a joke. Everyone forgets the House passed a bill that raises the debt limit past Pres. Obama's campaign. The only thing they asked for was to allow the states, or we the people, to vote on whether we would like for the American Government to balance their budget just like 49 states have to do every year. So whp's the one that won't compromise? Don't give into the drama.

asb 1 year, 9 months ago

The 49 states balance their budgets because their growth is funded with federal money; because the federal government underwrites our future with debt. Not one of them would have "balanced budgets" if they were soverign nations. Debt too high, fine spend less and/or tax more, but if any of us let a legal debt mechanism go just to pout at the bank we borrowed it from, we'd lose our houses and cars. Bush attacked the future by giving back taxes to the people who pulled his strings, and now the economy requires they give some of it back.

Gabrielle 1 year, 9 months ago

asb:

WOW! Interesting perspective,asb: 'The 49 states balance their budgets because their growth is funded with federal money; because the federal government underwrites our future with debt. Not one of them would have "balanced budgets" if they were soverign nations' - never thought about it in this way. Going to ponder this. Thanks.
What does this mean? 'Debt too high, fine spend less and/or tax more, but if any of us let a legal debt mechanism go just to pout at the bank we borrowed it from, we'd lose our houses and cars.'
Are you referring to the 'Bush tax cuts' when you say: 'Bush attacked the future by giving back taxes to the people who pulled his strings'?

bluesfan13 1 year, 9 months ago

1 is incorrect. Federal funds administered at the state level are for specific programs. Without those funds, those specifc programs would not exist, and the budget would still be balanced.

John 1 year, 9 months ago

However, bluesfan, most of those programs are "matching funds" and therefore do require state input.

2warped757 1 year, 9 months ago

Basic budgeting is pretty simple - to avoid debt, income must be greater than "outgo" (spending). Start taking a hard look at where this should be cut, starting with retirement packages for elected officials.

tonto 1 year, 9 months ago

Why is it that everyone wants to start with annoying but inconsequential items like elected officials' retirement? You can't balance a budget where revenues are only 61% of expenditures by cutting small stuff.

The big money is in Social Security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid costs, and the military - which never met a weapons system they didn't want to buy, even if it hadn't been invented yet. There is where the budget has to be cut.

John 1 year, 9 months ago

Tonto, you are writing without thinking. There are MANY weapons systems,not wanted by the military (or not wanted by specific branches of our military) that have been forced upon their budget by elected officials and SecDef. Many of these programs were eventually dropped from the budget after partial completion (with millions and sometimes BILLIONS already spent). . . . and of course we can look at things liked elected officials retirement among many other things! It is thinking such as you advocate (not to worry about the small things) that has allowed our budget to creep up. You cut wherever and whenever there is fat. There isn't any fat in Social Security, there may be in Medicare, etc. But, wherever there is fat it needs to be considered.

tonto 1 year, 9 months ago

John, I am not willing to give exorbitant retirement benefits a pass but I don't think we can afford to focus our budget cutting efforts there. There are two big problems with your detail-oriented approach.

I could go along with it if I believed we could take a Dave Ramsey approach and use the small stuff as practice for bigger issues. I have very little faith in that approach to government. I fear that people would slay a couple of small dragons and go home feeling like they had won, while the big dragon continues to eat our grandchildren's future.

I agree we need to look at everything but we have to count on the big cuts coming from the big programs. All of the cuts combined from the small programs won't help us if we can't make the big cuts. There's just not enough money in the small programs.

There is also the annoyance factor which leads to distraction, and may be intentional. We are already getting brush-back comments from congress-persons who chair defense budget committees, of the "Don't you dare come a-lookin' here, boy!" variety. I don't think that is really partisan but more in the nature of a turf claim, as in "We really, really, really need that money in my district!" nature as you pointed out.

m2thadsr 1 year, 9 months ago

The tea party are hypocrites. Fiscally Responsible but there so called leader loaned his campaign $40k + but he is behind on his child support over $100k. If this is fiscal responsibility the good ole U.S. is headed for a big depression if they ever get control of congress orthe white house. Responsibility does not allow you as a member of congress to allow your country to go down in flames just so u can make the big bad black president a one term president.

If that is responsibility then all of you people that are on the left and on the right are more messed up than anyone could possibly think you are.

spelchek 1 year, 9 months ago

By your argument I can label all democrats adulterers.

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