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Susan Walsh / AP
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., center, listens during a news conference on the debt ceiling on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 21, 2011. He is joined by, from left, Rep Reid Ribble, R-Wisc, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
By Karoun Demirjian (contact) 
Thursday, July 21, 2011 | 8:15 p.m.
Harry Reid
Barack Obama
John Boehner
Sun coverage
Sun archives
- Boehner: House will compromise on debt limit (7-21-2011)
- Reid sends signal he won’t back compromise bill based on budget cuts (7-21-2011)
- With debt ceiling decisions will come consequences — practical and political (7-15-2011)
- Dean Heller takes hard line on debt ceiling, wants balanced budget amendment (7-15-2011)
- Latest developments in debt ceiling standoff (7-14-2011)
- Debt ceiling debate colors Nevada 2012 elections (7-8-2011)
- Harry Reid to keep Senate in session as debt limit deadline looms (6-30-2011)
- Berkley says no to raising debt ceiling, refuses ‘show vote’ (5-31-2011)
- Measure on raising debt ceiling not likely to gain traction (5-31-2011)
Sometimes, you can tell more about what’s happening behind closed doors from what you don’t hear than what you do.
Congressional Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Dick Durbin from of the Senate and Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer from the House spent almost two hours holed up with President Barack Obama on Thursday evening. It was an emergency meeting at the end of day of devastating news and damage control by Democrats.
Afterward, most of them didn’t return to the Capitol.
Obama and House Republican leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor met Wednesday night to discuss a $3 trillion compromise to raise the debt limit. It would be based largely on cuts, with only modest revenue increases. Such a compromise could affect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
That’s not a deal that sat well with most Democrats, including Reid.
“The president always talked about balance. That there had to be some fairness in this. That this can’t be all cuts,” Reid said. “There has to be a balance. There has to be some revenue in the cuts. My caucus agrees with that.”
His caucus emerged from a Thursday luncheon with White House officials to tell reporters it had been one of the most demoralizing caucus meetings they’d ever attended.
Reid has been saying that a comprehensive cuts deal is a nonstarter, not only because he doesn’t want to touch entitlement spending without raising revenue elsewhere (for example, by ending some subsidies or allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on the highest wage earners). He also says, at this juncture, there isn’t enough time to do something so broad.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, who had been pushing a grand bargain-style deal with his Gang of Six, said Thursday time is running short and suggested a stopgap measure, which the White House has opposed since the beginning.
For the past week, Reid has been pushing, along with Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a backup plan that would allow the president to raise the debt ceiling in stages over the next 18 months. The plan would also feature $1 trillion to $2 trillion in cuts and leave entitlements untouched, even without accompanying revenue.
The plan hasn’t secured a lot of Republican support, even though McConnell designed it to protect Republicans from the politically unsavory position of having to defend a vote to raise the debt limit.
But apparently it doesn’t have the key ingredient of Democratic support either: The president this week called it the “bare minimum” of all options on the table.
Although Reid and Boehner are counterparts in Congress, Obama and Boehner have become the minds that need to meet to resolve various budgeting and tax crises. Both occupy the top office in their parties, and both are centrists who tend to trade toward the center of negotiations a bit more than their immediate deputies — and both seem to want a bigger compromise deal than what Reid and McConnell are proposing.
But to rank-and-file Democrats, the idea of a deal that rests on budget cuts is a difficult pill to swallow. Trading cuts to raise the debt limit, in their analysis, misses the idea that avoiding default is everyone’s concern. For Democrats, a more plausible balancing act is entitlement cuts for tax increases — but if Obama and Boehner’s discussions turn into a deal, the former will be in, and the latter, they fear, may be out.
Obama and Boehner’s aides spent the day denying there was any deal — or that the parties were even close. There are, in fact, various scenarios that could have played out in the West Wing between the president and his deputies in Congress.
Obama could have spent almost two hours whipping congressional Democrats with the news that they were going to have to take cuts with a minimal nod to taxes, or be politically responsible for default if they hold their ground on entitlements too firmly.
Or, lawmakers could have spent the time discussing a short-term measure that would allow leaders to take up a multitrillion-dollar “grand bargain” of cuts and revenue increases in early 2012.
Reid had planned to clear the Senate’s deck Friday with a vote on the Republican-favored Cut, Cap and Balance Act to make way for bringing his and McConnell’s bill, already drafted, to the floor as soon as this weekend.
Reid announced no changes to that expected schedule Thursday night.
House Republicans scheduled an all-members’ meeting for this morning, likely to talk about next steps on the debt deal.
We need to make sure that Social Security,
Medicare and Medicade ARE OFF THE TABLE, PERIOD.
The only people who can handle any sacrifice,
at this point, are rich republicans.
IF NEED BE, RAISE THE DEBT CEILING WITH NO
STRINGS ATTACHED, AS DONE IN THE PAST.
LET'S GET IT DONE.
Comment removed by moderator. Language.
"House Republicans scheduled an all-members' meeting for this morning, likely to talk about next steps on the debt deal."
Hopefully, the discussion will be on basic known beliefs like the earth is not flat, it is actually round. That indeed if you place your hand over a fire, you will get burned. And also the fact that if you continue with this clown show the Republican Party insists on producing that it will indeed place the U.S. on the same level playing field as a third world country in sub-Sahara Africa. Basically, a third world country that struggles to pay their debts.
There is no denying the simple fact of the matter. They are empowered to do something. And do it quickly. But they are not doing it. Because they want to play silly ass stupid party politic games. To Republicans, it is more important to try to gain a political advantage over the Democrats. Even if it involves driving America into the dirt and mud. Into an economic morass we will be stuck in for years and years and years and years.
The Republican Party, make no mistake about it, if they pursue this take no prisoner, screw anyone that disagrees with their right wingnut archaic view of life, coupled with not looking at the whole picture as it pertains to financial markets, will actually end up OWNING this economic meltdown. To pursue this course of action, they will emphatically tell not only America, but also the entirety of Wall Street, and ultimately every financial market in the world, that we are deadbeats...we're not paying debts we incurred. This will be on their backs. No one elses. The Republican Party, as a whole, and I don't give a crap if they are leftover lazy do nothing Bush loyalists, moderates and/or whacknut Tea Party types who don't believe anything even when you smack them in the face with a dead carp repeatedly, THEY WILL OWN THIS COURSE OF ACTION THEY WILLFULLY UNDERTOOK! They will be at fault for America dying a slow and steady economic death. They will be at fault for people lining up in bread lines and eating a steady diet of cooked fricasse of catfood. No one else is to blame. They will be responsible for America reverting to a deadbeat nation, much like a third world nation, unwilling and incapable of paying debts incurred. We're talkin' brother? Can you spare a dime? stuff. Serious soup lines.
This is the Republican Party now. They are without a doubt insane. They are not fiscally conservative. More like financially stupid. They only want power and money. PERIOD.
They need to be voted out at the earliest possible moment. I intend to vote every Republican I can see out of power in 2012, but even then, it's too late. Because the damage they can cause before that happens WILL BE DEVASTATING.
KEEP UP THE FIGHT, SENATOR REID!
Hey Tom! As a resident of the C Street Cult House, you were on the horn with Doug Hampton and the Ensign Klan trying to arrange a payoff to cover up Ensign's zipper problem? Do you want to go the way of John Edwards?
Time to pray for your salvation. Destroy Social Security and Medicare and you will go to hell when Armageddon comes.
When R's say Obama wants to destroy the nation, they sound like morons. When you here say the same thing about R's, you sound like morons.
Indeed, lets just keep raising the debt ceiling. We're never gonna pay it off anyway, right? Fiscal responsibility NOW!
"IF NEED BE, RAISE THE DEBT CEILING WITH NO
STRINGS ATTACHED, AS DONE IN THE PAST." - teamster
That is *exactly* what has gotten where we are today. We can no longer go to the credit card company and ask for a limit increase.
We, the American citizens, must demand that our government pay off the debt and keep the credit card for true emergencies *only*.
Every family who has applied for credit card after credit and taken out 2nd and even 3rd mortgages to buy things they want has learned that at some point there is no more credit to be had. Our nation is now at that point, and we must pay the bill down if we want to even dream of having the "full faith and credit" of the United States have any meaning at all.
At this point the american people are disgusted with the republican party. Six months ago we were excited about sitting down at the table and working out a deficit reduction plan, but thats not what they want. A real deficit reduction plan would be over ten years. It would keep unemployment going for those who are hurting and cut spending drastically two years from now when the economy improves. Also it would raise taxes and close loop holes that are egregious. I mean a Hedge Fund guy who makes a BILLION dollars a year gets a tax rate of 15% but me making $65K pays around 30%. That right there is an outrage. We need to stand up and protest being wronged.
Thanks for Harry Reid Nevada! Good God that man is the WORST!