Washington's warring weekend: Dueling votes, parties

By David Rogers

Warring House and Senate votes late Friday set up a tense weekend of confrontation — and what the White House hopes are still meaningful negotiations — before markets reopen Monday, one day before the threat of default.

Stocks slid for the sixth day in a row as anxiety grew on Wall Street, and Washington’s once dry debt debate has grown into a high stakes game of political chess quite unlike anything the city has seen in decades.

The House moved first, narrowly approving a Republican-backed debt ceiling bill but only after Speaker John Boehner had to tack right again by adding a provision threatening default next year if Congress doesn’t first approve a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

The 218-210 vote was quickly followed by a 59-41 Senate roll call tabling the House bill — at least for the moment. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid set in motion a 1 a.m. Sunday cloture vote on his own debt ceiling and deficit reduction package estimated between $2.2 trillion and $2.4 trillion.

Reid’s timing was ominous, suggesting the two sides are each trying to back the other into a corner still — without reaching a meaningful deal. But the House bill could yet be resurrected and Republicans predicted it could still be amended as part of a final compromise negotiated by all sides over the weekend.

Much depends still on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is deeply worried by the prospect of default and has had a running series of conversations with Vice President Joe Biden to try to defuse the crisis. McConnell was frozen in place out of loyalty to Boehner during the House debate but even after, Democrats complained that he was restraining his rank-and-file members from participating in talks.

“There is a growing sentiment by senators on both sides of the aisle to sit down and reach a reasonable compromise to save our economy from the disaster that awaits us,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) “What these senators on the Republican side are waiting for is a permission slip from Sen. McConnell.”

That would be a vintage McConnell approach, but aides to the Republican leader said he is fully prepared to begin talks with Reid and others, as long as President Barack Obama is also represented at the table.

There’s been bad blood between McConnell and Reid after a falling out last weekend over debt talks also involving Boehner. But McConnell’s office expressed confidence that a deal could yet be reached with the White House represented.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), a close friend of the speaker and member of the bipartisan “Gang of Six” deficit-reduction group in the Senate, could yet be a factor. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), also one of the six, moved among sympathetic Republicans on the Senate floor, and Reid took care to pay heed to the Gang’s work, and this could yet be an avenue to bring over Republicans.

“I’m a total Gang of Six guy,” Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.). “So if there’s any way that could be brought forward, I’m for it.”

Yet Reid’s chances of getting to 60 votes Saturday night appear slim, and the whole scenario may be a device to put pressure on Republicans by making them appear obstructive and filibustering.

A spokesman for Massachusetts Republican Sen. Scott Brown signaled support for Reid, but even Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) indicated she would oppose cloture.

“Senator Brown will support a bill that contains spending cuts and doesn’t increase taxes and allows us to avoid default,” his spokesman said. “That could be a Republican bill, or a Democrat bill — it doesn’t matter. He believes we need to set aside our party loyalties and get the job done for the people we represent.”

As adopted, Boehner’s bill allows for an immediate $400 billion increase in the Treasury’s borrowing authority to be followed by a $500 billion increment this fall. But the new balanced budget language explicitly limits Obama’s ability to seek a further $1.6 trillion increase in borrowing authority that will be needed early next year. And Democrats are increasingly worried that this will all play out in December and suppress consumer confidence in the midst of the holiday season.

The vote capped a 24-hour roller coaster ride for Boehner, who still lost 22 of his Republicans and ended up in a situation where his bill almost guarantees renewed conflict and uncertainty at the end of this year.

In his closing remarks, delivered from the well of the chamber, Boehner looked weary and was alternately defensive and defiant.

“I have worked with the president and the administration from the beginning of this year to avoid being in this spot. I have offered ideas. I have negotiated,” the speaker said emotionally. “I stuck my neck out a mile to try to get an agreement with the president of the United States. I put revenues on the table in order to come to an agreement to avert us being where we are.”

Left unsaid was how much the forces in his own party had pulled him back — especially on the revenue issue.

“To the American people I would say we’ve tried our level best,” Boehner said. “We’ve done everything we can to find a common sense solution that could pass both houses of this Congress and end this crisis.”

At the White House, the president warned “We are almost out of time …We need to reach a compromise by Tuesday so that our country will have the ability to pay its bills on time, as we always have — bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.”

“Keep in mind, if we don’t do that, if we don’t come to an agreement, we could lose our country’s AAA credit rating.” Obama said. “Not because we didn’t have the capacity to pay our bills — we do — but because we didn’t have a AAA political system to match our AAA credit rating.”

As adopted, the Boehner debt bill allows for two adjustments in Treasury’s borrowing authority, each contingent on achieving at least matching savings.

The first — a $900 billion increase in the debt ceiling — would begin to phase in almost immediately and is paired with an estimated $917 billion in 10-year savings wrung out of future appropriations bills to fund government operations.

The second – for $1.6 trillion — is expected to be needed in about six months but can only happen if Congress first agrees to major new savings from a broad cross-section of government benefit and healthcare programs, including Medicare.

Significant advance work has already been done in the course of deficit talks led by Biden and Obama’s subsequent negotiations with Boehner. But the House bill sets the savings target so high at $1.8 trillion that Democrats fear it is designed to fail at the worst moment for the president going into the 2012 elections.

In an emotional moment Thursday, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) angrily accused the GOP of mounting a thinly-veiled campaign to browbeat Obama over a debt crisis that had been building long before his presidency.

“No other president has been [stood] up, shook down or held hostage as president of the United States over this debt vote,” Jackson shouted over the pounding gavel. “This is fundamentally unfair to change the rules in the middle of the game.”

Darren Goode contributed to this report.