Debt votes accompanied by political posturing

By Karoun Demirjian

Friday, July 29, 2011 | 8:50 p.m.

The House finally pulled together to approve Speaker John Boehner’s debt bill Friday night, but it only enjoyed about a two-hour life span. That’s how long it took lawmakers in the House to deliver the bill to the Senate, which promptly quashed it.

But it didn’t all go down without a lot of incredulity and yelling.

“I stuck my neck out a mile...Put something on the table Tell us where you are,” House Speaker John Boehner yelled on the House floor after his bill passed 218-210. Every Democrat and 22 Republicans voted no.

It was a victory speech that brought cheers from his caucus, even as the bill faced a certain fate in the Senate, where it died on a 59-41 vote to table the motion.

Once the deed was done, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wasn’t above seizing center stage for a little grandstanding, but in a much quieter way.

“We’ve gotten into an issue here that is ugly. Everything that moves here is a super-majority,” Reid said, complaining about the Republicans’ penchant for threatening filibusters. “We’re happy to have a vote here anytime, but it should be a simple majority vote...on our proposal moving forward.”

When Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell objected, to Reid’s surprise — “this is almost an out-of-body experience,” he said — Reid gripped the podium and set his jaw.

“If the legislation in the House of Representatives required a super-majority, we would not be dealing with the Boehner....” he paused, his face and body curling forward into a pursed-lip snarl as he started slowly and angrily swaying. “Um. Trying to say a nice word...the Boehner legislation.”

It’s going to be a long weekend.

With only four days to go, the process that matters, procedurally, is the one that will be taking place in the Senate. Reid filed motions Friday night that will let him call an introductory vote on his bill at 1 a.m. Sunday.

McConnell tried to get him to speed up the clock, but Reid only agreed to budge if McConnell would give up his right to filibuster.

They got nowhere.

In the meantime, the House, not to be left on the sidelines, is planning to vote Saturday afternoon on a legislative hologram of Reid’s bill, to prove it would be just as dead on the House floor as the House’s bill was in the Senate.

Okay, so “legislative hologram” isn’t really a technical term.

But that’s essentially what it is. The House will take a bill they’ve got sitting around, gut it, replace the language with the text of Reid’s bill, and vote it down to make a statement that Reid’s bill won’t pass the House.

Sound a little over the top?

Well, the Senate was gearing up to do the same Friday night when they were waiting around for Boehner’s bill and thought the House might be delaying transit to make a political point. But the House bill arrived and they dropped the plan.

That was Friday night: yell-fests, filibuster flare-ups and a little holographic legislative imaging.

On the floors of Congress, that is. Off of them, somewhere, there are people trying to hammer out a compromise before 12:01 a.m. Wednesday morning.