Goobergunch Political Report

Yesterday, the revised Boehner bill passed the House, 218-210, and was immediately rejected by the Senate, 59-41. Surprise, surprise.

House Republicans then put the current Reid bill up for a vote today. A 2/3 supermajority was required for passage, so this vote—173-246—was just for show. The House then adjourned for the weekend. The next House votes are expected at about noon EDT on Monday.

The Senate remains in session and is scheduled to have a cloture vote on the Reid bill at 1 AM EDT tonight. 43 Republicans have signed a letter opposing the current bill. Since 60 votes are required to invoke cloture and bring the bill to a vote, that dooms the Reid bill unless changes are made.

The House and Senate bills really aren’t that far apart, but at this point I’m not detecting any hints of compromise from Republicans. Two and a half days to go…

UPDATE [21:31 CDT by Goobergunch]: That cloture vote got postponed until 1 PM EDT tomorrow, to buy Sen. Reid a bit more time to negotiate.

The good news is that it seems the reports about Pell Grant cuts being required to raise the debt ceiling were wrong.

The bad news:

In section 301, in the matter proposed to be inserted as section 3101A(a)(2)(A) of title 31, United States Code, strike “is greater than $1,600,000,000,000” and insert “is greater than $1,600,000,000,000 and the Archivist of the United States has submitted to the States for their ratification a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the United States pursuant to a joint resolution entitled ‘Joint resolution proposing a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States’”.

The primary reason I refused to talk about the “Cut, Cap, and Balance Bill” was that it’s blatantly unrealistic to expect a constitutional amendment—which requires a 2/3 vote by both houses—to be approved as a precondition for raising the debt ceiling. With this amendment, the current House bill has been dragged down to that bill’s level.

As previously noted, this bill will die as soon as it hits the Senate. But if House Republicans only accept a debt ceiling increase if a constitutional amendment is approved by the Congress, then we’re screwed. The Constitution should only be amended after due deliberation, not as an emergency measure at the demands of a Congressional minority.

At this point, I really don’t know whether Speaker Boehner can bring a debt ceiling bill—any bill—that can pass both Houses. Such a bill would have to pass with substantial Democratic support, and would probably put John Boehner’s Speakership in major jeopardy. And at this point, there’s no sign that Boehner has even been talking to House Democrats.

Three and a half days to go…

Schadenfreude!
People taking pleasure in your pain!

The Boehner bill can’t pass the Senate, as every Democrat there has pledged to vote against it.

I may have neglected to add one failure state.

House Republican leaders have postponed indefinitely a vote on Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) debt-limit bill after they could not persuade enough Republicans to support the measure.

Why?

House conservatives who have stalled legislation to raise the national debt limit are angry that it includes $17 billion in supplemental spending for Pell Grants, which some compare to welfare.

The bill was already unacceptable to every single Democrat in Congress. I’m sure that making it harder for poor children to go to college will raise the number of Democratic votes from 0 to 0. Which means that the bill still dies as soon as it arrives in the Senate.

But policy aside, the big news story is that Speaker John Boehner can’t control his own caucus. Say what you want about Nancy Pelosi, but she could count votes. The inability of the House Republican leadership to pass the bill today is a huge embarrassment and doesn’t speak well for Boehner’s political future.

So where do we go from here? The House Rules Committee just approved a “martial law” rule, which permits same-day consideration of further Rules Committee measures. The “martial law” authority will run through 2 August, so any bill to raise the debt ceiling can be called up at short notice. The House convenes at 9 AM EDT tomorrow morning, and the Republicans will have a conference meeting at 10 AM. I’ll update when we know more.

If any of you thought the Republican pledge from the last election to hold an open and transparent legislative process was serious, I encourage you to kindly refrain from voting in the future. This is the exact “writing bills in the Speaker’s office” that Republicans campaigned against last fall.

And of course, even when this gets through the House, everything I said in my previous post holds. Four days left…

The Boehner bill can’t pass the Senate, as every Democrat there has pledged to vote against it.

The Reid bill is liable to be filibustered to death in the Senate.

Even if it passes the Senate, the Reid bill won’t go to the House floor without changes.

At any rate:

The constant disagreements over the various proposals have masked a broader agreement on the need for an extended period of deficit reduction — “an era of austerity,” as Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi declared Monday. Both John Boehner and Harry Reid have proposed slashing $1.2 trillion in federal discretionary spending over the next 10 years and arming a bipartisan commission with procedural protections if they can agree on a plan with an even larger suite of cuts.

[...]

Similarly, authorities such as the International Monetary Fund have dismissed (pdf) the idea that austerity measures would help an economy such as the United States’ in the short term, pointing out that few cases exist where sharp cuts led to fast growth in countries where employment was robust, interest rates were high (so the monetary authorities could compensate for the cuts), and exports were strong — conditions that don’t apply to the United States. More normally, they concluded, “a fiscal consolidation equal to 1 percent of GDP typically reduces GDP by about 0.5 percent within two years and raises the unemployment rate by about 0.3 percentage point.”

This entire debt ceiling “crisis” is so infinitely stupid that it’s really not worth much of my mental energy. Of course, by no means is it the final crisis that we’ll see this Congress. There’s the new fiscal year that begins in October, just for starters.

Five days left…