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July 25, 2011 – 10:48 p.m.

GOP Works to Sell Boehner Plan

By Joseph J. Schatz, CQ Staff

House Republican leaders are working to find enough votes in their majority conference to pass Speaker John A. Boehner’s latest debt limit and deficit reduction proposal — a plan that has divided conservative ranks and drawn criticism from President Obama.

But an alternative floated by Senate Democrats, and supported by Obama, also faces an uncertain future.

“We’re left with a stalemate,” Obama said of the debt limit debate in a national address Monday night, telling lawmakers to bring him a compromise plan to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling in the next “few days.”

Still, the amount of attention given to Boehner’s newest legislative pitch suggests it could be a focus of negotiations for at least the next few days. Notably, Obama did not explicitly threaten to veto Boehner’s solution.

However, Obama specifically targeted the Boehner plan’s initial short-term debt ceiling increase, which he said would last six months, as insufficient. Obama said a short-term deal could spark a downgrade of U.S. debt.

“That is no way to run the greatest country on Earth,” the president said.

Boehner fired back, blasting a Senate Democratic proposal for being “filled with phony accounting and Washington gimmicks.”

The Speaker sounded a confident note about his proposal, predicting it would pass both the House and Senate. “If the president signs it, the ‘crisis’ atmosphere he has created will simply disappear,” Boehner said.

Despite Boehner’s optimism, House passage of his plan, which could reach the floor as early as Wednesday if it appears to be drawing sufficient support, was far from a foregone conclusion as of Monday evening given opposition from some leading conservative lawmakers.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also plans to advance his preferred option this week, although that measure is thought to have little chance in the GOP-controlled House.

Boehner’s latest offering pulls back significantly from earlier House legislation (HR 2560) that would have made a debt limit increase contingent on adoption of a balanced-budget constitutional amendment.

Instead, it would raise the debt ceiling in two stages, with the second increment dependent on Congress clearing a to-be-written $1.8 trillion spending-cut bill. The measure also would immediately raise the debt ceiling by $1 trillion with accompanying spending cuts.

If Boehner does come up with the votes, Republicans are gambling that reluctant Senate Democrats will have little choice but to go along, and that Obama, with jittery global investors watching Capitol Hill closely, will find it politically untenable to refuse their offer.

GOP Works to Sell Boehner Plan

With one week to go until the Aug. 2 debt limit deadline set by the Treasury Department, the Speaker’s ability to balance those objectives remains unclear.

Congressional Democrats blasted the Boehner plan, saying they prefer Reid’s proposal, which would boost the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion but trim discretionary spending by only $1.2 trillion.

That means Boehner probably will have to rely on GOP votes to pass his bill, which could be difficult given his conference of budget hawks.

Rep. Jim Jordan, head of the conservative Republican Study Committee, came out against the plan Monday evening, saying it did not meet the standard set by the “cut, cap and balance” plan that passed in the House but was rejected in the Senate.

“Washington wants a deal. Americans want a solution,” Jordan, R-Ohio, said in a statement. Although many House conservatives have a history of going their own way, Jordan led a group of 59 GOP lawmakers in April who defied Boehner by voting against passage of the continuing resolution (PL 112-10) to fund agencies for the remainder of this fiscal year.

Advancing the Boehner plan in the Senate could be difficult as well, and senior members from both parties said talks continued behind the scenes to find a new way forward.

“I think it will be demonstrated clearly at the end of the week that the Boehner approach is not going to pass in the Senate,” Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois said. “Then the question is whether the senators, Democrats and Republicans, can come up with a more reasonable, moderate approach to solving this problem.”

In a caucus meeting Monday night, Democrats criticized Boehner for dropping out of broad deficit negotiations with Obama, Durbin said. “There’s a feeling now that we have to stand together,” he said.

Obama Pushes for Action

But Obama, who seemed to have Republicans on the run just a few weeks ago, sought to seize back the momentum Monday night, using the bully pulpit of the presidency in a speech from the East Room.

“I have told leaders of both parties that they must come up with a fair compromise in the next few days that can pass both houses of Congress — a compromise I can sign,” Obama said. “And I am confident we can reach this compromise.”

Boehner has told his members that they risk losing leverage the longer this debate drags out. And Obama remains focused on the Reid plan, which for the first time laid out a series of spending cuts that Senate Democrats would accept.

The Reid plan would raise the debt ceiling by $2.4 trillion, enough to last the government through 2012, and would include $1.2 trillion in discretionary spending cuts decided in earlier bipartisan talks led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

GOP Works to Sell Boehner Plan

An additional $100 billion would come from “savings” in mandatory programs, including the sale of spectrum and changes to farm subsidies, also agreed to by the Biden group.

A fact sheet provided by Democrats said there would be $400 billion in interest savings as a result of the spending cuts, which it claims is also reflected in the House plans.

And $1 trillion would come from “savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” an approach that the fact sheet says matches one used in the House GOP “cut, cap and balance” bill and the House-passed budget resolution (H Con Res 34).

Still, Boehner dismissed the Reid plan as “full of gimmicks.”

Republican leaders insist that Reid originally supported the Boehner plan, which looks very similar to a tentative proposal Reid had discussed in recent weeks with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Moreover, Republicans suspect the president may end up accepting something like the Boehner plan, and they are watching to see how the White House reacts to the legislation. Specifically, they are watching how it words any statement of administration policy — and how strongly it phrases any talk of a veto threat.

If the House passes the Boehner bill, the question then becomes whether Reid will offer his plan as an amendment on the Senate floor, and whether it can attract 60 votes.

Boehner Plan Details

The first stage of Boehner’s plan would immediately cut spending and impose a 10-year cap on discretionary spending to save $1.2 trillion, and raise the debt limit by $1 trillion, an amount expected to satisfy the government’s borrowing needs until next February.

Modeled after statutory spending caps that Congress enacted in 1997 (PL 105-33), which lapsed in 2002, the caps would include a sequester mechanism that would be triggered if the spending limits were not met in any year, forcing across-the-board spending cuts in all non-exempt accounts.

Congress would consider the second piece of the debt package in December. The specifics of the proposal to cut an additional $1.8 trillion in federal spending would be prepared by a 12-member joint congressional committee made up of three lawmakers from each party and each chamber.

House and Senate votes would be mandated by Dec. 23.

If Congress enacted the cuts, the president would receive an additional $1.6 trillion in debt limit authority, unless lawmakers push through a resolution of disapproval over his expected veto.

GOP Works to Sell Boehner Plan

“I’d be very surprised if it doesn’t get the 218 and then some,” said Tom Cole, R-Okla., who praised Boehner’s strategy. “I think it can pass the Senate” if Reid allows it on the floor, he said. “We see the president as the biggest obstacle.”

Richard E. Cohen and Alan K. Ota contributed to this story.

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