Reid calls McConnell out for exaggerating his influence in deal

By Karoun Demirjian

Saturday, July 30, 2011 | 4:27 p.m.

When Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell speak in colloquies on the Senate floor, there is less than 10 feet separating their desks. But as pressure mounts on Congress to compromise on a debt deal, the strip of blue rug between them might as well be an ocean.

As the link between the House Republicans and the Senate, Republican Leader McConnell is the man most equipped to strike a deal, but he made it clear on Saturday he has no interest in negotiating with Reid: if he’s going to deal with the Democrats, it’s going to be with their biggest gun — President Barack Obama.

“We are fully engaged with the one person in America, the one in 307 million, that can sign this bill into law,” McConnell said to reporters outside House Speaker John Boehner’s office Saturday afternoon. “If the president decides to reach an agreement, the rest of the Democrats will fall in line.”

Saturday evening, after a 95-minute meeting with the Obama, Reid returned to the Capitol to call McConnell’s bluff for saying Republicans and the president were anywhere near dealmaking.

“Members of the Senate, that’s not true,” he said. “The engagement there is not in any meaningful way ... merely saying that you have an agreement in front of a few television cameras doesn’t make it so.”

Reid charged McConnell again with being the only thing standing between the Senate and a resolution to the crisis.

“While the Republican leader’s holding meaningless press conferences, the Republicans are reaching out to me,” Reid said. “I’ll come to his office, I’ll go to the White House with him; I will do anything I can do.”

But McConnell rebuffed his offer.

“The fact of the matter is the only way we are going to get an agreement before Tuesday is with the president,” McConnell said, not protesting the veracity of anything Reid said, but defending his connection to the White House by saying he had just been phone with Vice President Joe Biden before Reid called Senators to the floor.

“What I think is not helpful is the process we’re going through here on the Senate floor,” McConnell said. “I’m not interested in scoring any political points, I’m interested in getting an outcome for the American people.”

Reid leaped on that, lambasting McConnell for blocking an outcome otherwise ready to go by threatening a filibuster of Reid’s bill, and thus forcing Reid to cull 60 votes. Forty-three Republicans have said they would vote against it, meaning Reid only has 57.

“We are here today, right now, for this reason: it’s spelled f-i-l-i-b-u-s-t-e-r,” Reid said. “It’s unconscionable that the Republicans would filibuster us to default on our national obligations.”

Discussions of procedure have risen to be just as omnipresent as discussions about the content of these bills in the last 24 hours, with Reid arguing that Republicans need to drop their threat, and McConnell expressing incredulity that Reid could expect the Republicans to just voluntarily forgo what’s become standard practice around the Senate on a matter of this magnitude, in terms of both importance and controversy.

“It seems to me ... it would be a good idea to allow the majority to have a vote on the proposal they say they’re in favor of,” McConnell said, urging the Senate to just take the filibuster vote now, and kill Reid’s measure. It’s scheduled for a vote, absent a compromise, for 1 a.m. Sunday.

Reid flatly refused — unless McConnell would lift his filibuster threat.

“You can put lipstick on it, a nice suit, even a skirt sometimes,” he said. “It’s still a filibuster.”

At this point, timing matters.

The longer Reid can keep his bill alive, the more influence he has over ongoing negotiations. It’s the only piece of living legislation left, because Boehner’s bill is already dead: if Reid’s dies too, they become equal relics of the past as lawmakers and the President scratch out yet another vehicle.

It also creates more time for Republicans within McConnell’s caucus to put pressure on their leader; not to cave, but to compromise.

Discussions with various Republican Senators suggest there are enough who want to, on potentially agreeable terms, so that lawmakers could clear a filibuster with an amended bill.