Taking square aim at the White House, Republicans prepared to bring to a House vote Thursday a two-step $2.5 trillion debt ceiling bill that will avert default next week but threatens more conflict — and renewed instability — in six months.
Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell remain in conversation over how to defuse the building confrontation before the threat of default next week. But with stocks falling again Wednesday, the fight between Speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama has become so personal that each side says the other needs to find some way to save face before reaching a deal.
Fifty-three senators, 51 Democrats and two independents, signed a letter to Boehner on Wednesday vowing to oppose the House bill. But the speaker is unapologetic about his intentions to use the default crisis to try to jam the Senate. And at a GOP conference Wednesday morning, he enlisted conservatives to be his “army” after he had stood “toe to toe” with the president and put his “neck on the line” for them.
“There are only three possible outcomes in this battle: President Obama gets his blank check; America defaults; or we call the president’s bluff by coming together and passing a bill that cuts spending and can pass in the United States Senate,” Boehner told the rank and file, according to aides to the speaker. “There is no other option.”
Republicans will hold another conference Thursday morning at which a final decision can be made about moving ahead. But after retooling the bill and getting a higher savings score from the Congressional Budget Office late Wednesday, there was growing confidence that Boehner will move ahead.
As now written, the measure allows for two adjustments in Treasury’s borrowing authority, each contingent on achieving at least matching savings.
The CBO said Reid's plan also didn't add up to the advertised spending cuts, but Reid said he was "comfortable" with the non-partisan budget agency's $2.2 trillion figure for savings.
A House vote on Boehner's proposal is expected today.
President Obama has said he support's Reid's proposal and will veto Boehner's proposal if it makes it out of Congress.
Reid would not commit to the timing of a Senate vote, or how much time it would take to work a bill through the system to get it to the president by next Tuesday.
"Probably … soon," Reid said.
"Magic things can happen in every Congress in a short period of time, under the right circumstances," he added.
So instead of voting on the debt plans, congressional leaders used Wednesday to attend to other business — an Interior Department spending bill in the House, the confirmation of FBI Director Robert Mueller to another term by the Senate — and to work at drumming up votes for their proposals.
During a closed-door morning meeting of the House Republican conference, Boehner told members to "get your ass in line" and vote for the bill, according to several GOP sources in the room.
"I can't do this job unless you are behind me," Boehner said.
His comments came as GOP staffers worked to rewrite the bill to bring the savings up to the level initially advertised.
Particularly at issue with conservatives is the ability to tie the vote allowing an increase in the debt ceiling to a vote on a balanced budget amendment.
The Boehner plan requires a vote on the amendment this year, but does not link that vote directly to a vote on the debt-limit increase, as an earlier Republican plan did.
Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said he's undecided on the Boehner plan but pleased that leaders had agreed to move a vote on a balanced budget amendment to Friday, up from later this year.
"I don't want to vote for any increase in the debt ceiling unless we've done everything in our power to send a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution to the Senate and to the states," Pence said.
House GOP members will meet behind closed doors again this morning to round up votes ahead of the House vote.
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