“There are many elements to be finalized, and there is still a distance to go before any arrangement can be completed,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “But I believe we should give everyone as much room as possible to do their work.”
“I’m glad to see this move toward cooperation and compromise. I hope it bears fruit.”
Just hours before Reid had sparred on the floor with McConnell over the seriousness of his efforts, and Reid’s change of tone — and tactics — suggested that real progress had been made. “We’re getting close,” said one GOP leadership aide, with knowledge of the discussions.
“In the category of getting serious, I have spoken to both the president and the vice president within the last hour,” McConnell had told reporters earlier in day in a joint appearance with Speaker John Boehner. “We are now fully engaged, the speaker and I, with the one person in America out of 307 billion people who can sign a bill into law. I’m confident and optimistic that we’re going to get an agreement in the very near future and resolve this crisis in the best interests of the American people.”
Boehner echoed McConnell’s statement, saying he believed that “we are going to be able to come to some sort of agreement.” But the speaker appears to have had no contact himself with President Barack Obama Saturday, while McConnell spoke to the president and reached out to Biden, after which the two men engaged in at least four back-and-forth phone calls through the day.
All day Saturday, Senate leaders tried to cobble together a coalition in a divided Congress. The aim was to reach the kind of agreement most economists, investors and foreign governments all along have believed would emerge before the world's biggest economy was subjected to an unprecedented risk.
The potential deal that was in the works late Saturday would include an agreement to raise the debt ceiling by at least the $2.4 trillion that President Obama had requested without requiring a second round of congressional approval Republicans had sought, according to a Democratic official familiar with the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations.
The deal would cut long-term federal spending in two phases. A first phase would cut about $1.2 trillion over the next decade from federal agency budgets. A second would create a bipartisan panel to propose a further $1.6 trillion in deficit-reduction measures later this year.
If that committee deadlocked, or if its recommendations were not approved, further automatic cuts would be triggered on long-term spending for both domestic and defense programs. An automatic cut in Medicare spending might also be imposed, the official said. Democrats appear to have given up a quest for a trigger that would impose revenue increases, deferring the tax debate until after the 2012 election. Republicans appear to have given up the idea of tying the debt increase to a vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
Vice President Joe Biden was the main go-between in talks involving the White House and congressional leaders, including Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Another Democratic official expressed the increased optimism at the White House. "Clearly everyone agrees we need to find consensus," the official said. "While we're not there yet, we're closer than we were 24 hours ago."
The optimism over progress in the talks remained fragile, however, and came only after a stalemate that has left many in and outside of Congress frustrated.
"We've all talked about the need to see compromise here, and then we go on to say why we can't compromise," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in a floor speech Saturday. "The one thing we have managed to do on a bipartisan basis here in this Congress is to incite fear in the American public."
"Somewhere there's a silver bullet," said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), another potential deal maker. "The Lone Ranger had it.... Why can't the U.S. Congress find it?"
Those sorts of lawmakers long have served as a bridge between the parties, making them the key to forging agreements on highly contentious issues.
Democrats are trying to protect both Obama and their threatened Senate majority. Restless liberals are frustrated by what they see as Obama's repeated capitulation to Republicans.
Republicans are still reeling from the grass-roots uprising of the "tea party" movement that helped send dozens of hard-line conservatives to Congress in November's election. Onetime deal makers of the Senate — Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), for example — have shifted to the right, fearing primary challenges.
When McConnell floated a compromise this month, freshmen in the House dubbed it the "Pontius Pilate" plan.
One veteran Republican lawmaker, talking about the debate with reporters, stopped himself when he let one word escape: "I'm not supposed to say 'deal,'" he said.
Political dynamics aside, former lawmakers say something fundamental has changed. The days of bipartisan socializing and interaction are gone. Many members make a point of spending as little time in Washington as possible, sleeping in their offices and leaving most weekends.
The result is a shortage of the personal relationships and political understandings that ease compromise. Former Rep. Robert Borski, a centrist Democrat from Pennsylvania who left office in 2003 after 20 years in the House, said that by the end of his tenure partisanship had increased to the point where Republicans would "avert their eyes" when he passed them in the Capitol corridors.
Votes to raise the debt ceiling "were routine," Borski added. "The opposition would make it uncomfortable for you, but … nothing like this.
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