Thread: Senate rejects Boehner's debt ceiling plan, 59-41

Senate rejects Boehner's debt ceiling plan, 59-41
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Senate Swiftly Rejects GOP Debt Plan Hours After House Vote

Published: Friday, 29 Jul 2011 | 8:33 PM ET Text Size By: Reuters

The Senate swiftly rejected Boehner's debt-limit plan just hours after the House passed it.

The House plans to vote on Democratic Sen. Harry Reid's plan Saturday, which would pave the way for a bipartisan compromise.

With time running short ahead of a Tuesday deadline, Republicans pushed their deficit-cutting plan through by a vote of 218-to-210 after the leadership reworked the bill to win over anti-tax conservatives in their ranks. They needed 216 to get it passed.

The bill was voted down 59 to 41 in the Senate.

House leaders say they'll do a House vote on the debt plan by Democratic Sen. Harry Reid on Saturday.

Still, both votes break weeks of political inertia and opens the door to talks on a compromise that could pass Congress before Tuesday, after which the government says it will be unable to pay all of its bills without a deal.

If a compromise is worked out, a final vote in the Senate could take place as early as Monday or by midday on Tuesday, a Senate Democratic aide told Reuters.

The delays make it impossible for Congress to strike a deal and send it to Obama's desk until the 11th hour, injecting a dangerous level of uncertainty into already rattled financial markets. A late deal also raises the prospect that the United States will lose its top-notch AAA credit rating.

House Speaker John Boehner's failure on Thursday to quell a rebellion among conservatives in his party and bring his proposal to a vote exposed a rift in the Republican Party that complicated efforts to reach a compromise.

The revised Republican plan passed Friday includes tougher requirements on Congress to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and send it to the states for ratification, a long-time core demand of conservative Republicans who say it is the only way to control spending.

The two-step plan would cut spending initially by about $900 billion and lift the debt ceiling only enough to last a few months.

Top Senate Democrat Harry Reid has said a short-term solution is unacceptable and is pushing his own bill that would cut $2.2 trillion in spending over 10 years.

Reid's plan is expected to be amended to make it more palatable to moderate Republicans in the House, and with Democratic votes offset the inevitable loss of support from anti-tax Tea Party-aligned Republicans.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43946958

Senate quickly acts to block House debt-ceiling plan

By Michael A. Memoli
July 29, 2011, 5:29 p.m.

The Senate voted Friday evening to reject Speaker John Boehner's debt-ceiling plan just hours after it moved through the House, setting up a dramatic weekend of negotiations as Congress works to stave off a potential federal default.

The Senate tally was 59-41 on the motion to table the House plan, including some Republican votes.

Even as leaders from both parties engage in frenetic talks on the way forward, the House will hold yet another symbolic vote. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced the chamber plans to hold a vote on legislation that closely mirrors Reid's plan, planning to kill it even before the Senate can adopt it.

In a statement on the earlier House vote, White House press secretary Jay Carney called Reid's plan the basis for final compromise and called for an end to "political exercise[s]."

"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," he said.

The likely compromise would be similar to major elements of Boehner's plan, but would drop his requirement that Congress go through another potentially protracted debate over the debt ceiling late this year.

Instead, it would include a complex mechanism that would attempt to guarantee that Congress will approve further reductions in the long-term federal deficit early in 2012.

The overall goal would be to cut the long-term deficit by more than $2 trillion over the next 10 years, in part by empowering a special congressional committee to propose spending cuts and possibly revenue increases later this year.

Congressional officials hope to develop a compromise that could pass the Senate early next week as the clock ticks down and then go back to the House and pass with a coalition of Democratic and Republican votes.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la ... 0563.story

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