(Roll call here)
Statement from White House press secretary Jay Carney on the House voting to pass John Boehner’s debt ceiling bill Friday:
The bill passed today in the House with exclusively Republican votes would have us face another debt ceiling crisis in just a few months by demanding the Constitution be amended or America defaults. This bill has been declared dead on arrival in the Senate. Now that yet another political exercise is behind us, with time dwindling, leaders need to start working together immediately to reach a compromise that avoids default and lays the basis for balanced deficit reduction.
Senator Reid’s proposal is a basis for that compromise. It not only achieves more deficit reduction than the bill passed in the House today and puts a process in place to achieve even more savings, it also removes the uncertainty surrounding the risk of default. The President urges Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to find common ground on a plan that can get support from both parties in the House – a plan the President can sign by Tuesday.
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Steve Benen: …. Why’d the House waste nearly a week on a doomed right-wing plan that House Republicans didn’t much care for? Especially after wasting last week on a similarly doomed right-wing plan that was immediately rejected by the Senate? The point had something to do with giving Boehner “leverage,” though the end result is a weakened Speaker, a divided GOP, and a nation perilously close to the most dramatic, needlessly destructive, self-inflicted wound imaginable.
President Barack Obama and Press Secretary Jay Carney walk along the Colonnade of the White House towards the Oval Office, July 29, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
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TPM: As promised, all Senate Democrats aligned Friday night to kill the just-passed House Republican bill to raise the debt limit.
The roll call fell closely along party lines, 59-41, with all Democrats voting to table Speaker John Boehner’s controversial bill, joined by several Republicans who also oppose that plan.
Now we enter a period of calm. Before midnight, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hopes to introduce his own debt limit bill – amended to include more spending cuts, and a few as-yet undisclosed carrots, to entice enough Republicans to overcome a filibuster and pass the legislation.
Senate Democratic aides confirm that the legislation is being updated now, after consultation with Republicans, but the precise details are tightly held.
They need to get those details right. House Republicans have scheduled a symbolic Saturday vote to knock down the original version of Reid’s bill – a move meant to illustrate that without further cuts and enticements can’t Reid’s bill pass the House.
Once the tweaks are completed, and the bill is introduced, Reid will set the wheels in motion to pass it. If all goes as currently planned, he’ll file cloture on the plan tonight. Because it will be attached to a privileged vehicle – the stripped bare shell of Boehner’s plan – it will tee-up a 1 a.m. Sunday vote to end an expected filibuster. If there are 60 votes – and that’s the crucial if – that will lock in a vote on final passage after 7 a.m. on Monday. Then it’s back to the House, with fingers crossed.
