"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
“You can blame the whole mess on cynical Democrats like Harry Reid, who could have raised the debt ceiling while in control of Congress last year. But they simply didn’t want to, preferring to play politics with the nation’s finances instead.”
— The Rhetorican, “A debt deal has been reached”
UPDATE 1:25 p.m. ET: The Senate just held a cloture vote on Harry Reid’s bill which, as expected, failed to get the 60 votes necessary to end debate and proceed. The vote was 50 “aye” and 49 “no.” So much for Reid’s bill being the “only game in town,” huh?
UPDATE 2:15 p.m. ET: Here’s the roll-call vote. Scott Brown of Massachusetts was the only Republican to vote “aye,” while Democrats Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Ben Nelson (Nebraska) both voted “no,” as did socialist independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Reid voted against his own bill on the cloture motion; this is a parliamentary maneuver, since voting “no” permits Reid to bring his bill up for a vote later.
Linked at Legal Insurrection — thanks!
PREVIOUSLY (11:45 a.m. ET): The outlines of the Neither Fish Nor Fowl Bipartisan Sellout Compromise Act of 2011 are coming into focus, and the Senate Republican leader is cautious:
McConnell said he is “very very close to being able . . . to recommend to my members that this is something that they ought to support.”
“You’ll see that this is a process that could get him (President Obama) past the election. We’re working on the combinations that will get us there,” McConnell said. “I’m particularly appreciative that we’re now back talking to the only person in America who can sign something into law and that’s the president of the United States.”
Getting Senate approval for a compromise plan will likely be much easier than getting such a deal through the House, as I explain at The American Spectator:
How many Republican votes can House Speaker John Boehner deliver for a compromise that abandons principles that were seen as essential to conservatives, when he could just barely get 218 votes for his own bill Friday? And if Boehner can’t deliver a majority for the compromise deal, can Nancy Pelosi produce any Democrat votes at all, considering that zero Democrats voted for Boehner’s bill?
If this deal does go through, the biggest loser will be Harry Reid, as Professor William Jacobson says: “We don’t know all the details of the negotiations between Mitch McConnell and the White House which apparently are closing in on an agreement, but one thing is clear, Harry Reid has become a sideshow.”
There’s always more room under Obama’s bus, isn’t there?
UPDATE: Linked by Da Tech Guy — thanks! — and the latest word is that there will be a procedural “test vote” in the Senate at 1 p.m. ET.
UPDATE: OK, here are details on the “test vote,” which is a cloture motion on Harry Reid’s bill:
Talks intensified ahead of a test vote in the Senate on the Democrats’ debt-ceiling plan. That vote is expected to fail, putting the onus on negotiators to come up with yet another alternative. . . .
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid has postponed a vote on his deficit-reduction package until 1 p.m. ET. That vote is still scheduled to take place, but 43 Senate Republicans have already vowed to oppose it, putting more pressure on negotiators to come up with an alternative.
Right now, I’m watching C-SPAN2, where Barbara Boxer is blathering on with her usual partisan crap.
UPDATE III: Boxer’s crap has now ended, and John McCain is now debating Dick Durbin. It’s like Freddie Krueger vs. Jason, Alien vs. Predator.
UPDATE IV: Amid the accusations of “betrayal!” and “sellout!” from conservatives angry at GOP concessions, let’s pause to look at what liberals are saying. Nate Silver of the New York Times:
The debt deals as reported really seem like more a capitulation by the White House than a compromise.
What the Left wanted — nay, demanded — were tax-increases on “The Rich” and “Corporate America.” Obama gave speech after speech demonizing “millionaires and billionaires.” But when push came to shove, he folded like a cheap suit.
If conservatives were in a mood to declare victory, we could easily do so on such grounds. Yet it seems to be Night of the Long Knives time, and there is a lot of grassroots anger toward the Republican Establishment.
Linked by Don Surber — thanks!
I could scarcely believe it when Michelle Malkin blogged this earlier: Democrats spent more than 24 hours refusing to call a cloture vote on Harry Reid’s own debt-ceiling bill. Cloture — the motion to end debate and bring a measure to a vote — requires 60 votes and, if such a vote falls short of the 60-vote threshold, debate continues and the measure is thus said to be “filibustered.”
What has actually happened since Friday, however, is not a filibuster. Democrats led by Reid, who know they don’t have 60 votes for his bill, have refused GOP calls for the cloture vote. Democrats are thus in effect filibustering their own bill!
In one of the most amazing moments in Senate history, on Saturday afternoon Harry Reid called a “live quorum” — requiring all senators to be present in the chamber — and threw what can only be described as a tantrum, demanding that the cloture rule be waived. Malkin describes what happened:
He repeated “filibuster” 100 times and even spelled it out — f-i-l-i-b-u-s-t-er.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell asked why Reid wouldn’t allow a cloture vote on the Reid proposal at 6:30pm Eastern.
Reid let out a thin laugh and meekly said: “I object.”
This is one of those things you can’t actually believe unless you see it, so here’s the video:
You see Reid claims that Republicans are “threatening” a filibuster, but GOP leader Mitch McConnell isn’t making any threats at all — he’s just saying that the Senate should follow established procedure and have a cloture vote. Then Reid accuses Republicans of “putting lipstick” on a filibuster. As I wrote at The American Spectator:
Of course, there was not actually a filibuster. Reid simply refused to bring his own bill up for a cloture vote because he knew it would have failed to get 60 votes, thus exposing the truth that it isn’t House Republicans who are the real obstacle to passing a debt-ceiling bill. But the Democrats have invested so much propaganda in the myth of House GOP obstructionism — it’s those crazy Tea Party extremists! — that Harry had to whine, whine, whine about a “filibuster” in order to attempt to maintain the charade.
For connoisseurs of inside-the-Beltway gamesmanship, this is one of those Kodak moments you want to frame and put on the mantle.
BTW, the plan had been to bring the bill to a vote at 1 a.m. ET Sunday– an hour past midnight – but about 10 p.m. Democrats announced an adjournment until noon, with a planned vote at 1 p.m. ET Sunday.
UPDATE: You may have noticed during that video that McConnell said he’d interrupted a conversation with Vice President Joe Biden in order to meet Reid’s call for a live quorum. Now there are unconfirmed reports that a deal has been reached between the White House and GOP leaders. So this leaves Harry Reid — who had previously said his bill was “the only game in town” — playing with himself.
What a complete chump!
UPDATE II: Jimmie Bise was one of the first to blog the (alleged) deal, and Ed Morrissey says:
It’s a deal we could have reached two weeks ago, but were never going to reach until time ran out.
Of course, but that’s like complaining about having to take a girl on three dates even when you knew from the start she was never going to put out until the third date.
UPDATE III: Linked by POH Diaries — thanks!
UPDATE IV: Jennifer Rubin has details of the deal:
Two senior Republican offices have confirmed that while the outlines of a debt-ceiling deal are in place, no “paper” has been exchanged. The agreement would take the country through the 2012 election, but the Boehner bill two-step cutting process would remain. A trillion in cuts up front would be followed by $1.8 more to be determined by a bipartisan commission.
(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) The important thing: No tax increases on those “millionaires and billionaires” in “corporate jets” that Obama has been demonizing for weeks. So any conservatives in a mood to claim victory can score that a “win.”
Of course, what we’re actually going to hear from conservatives is a lot of bitter complaints about GOP sellouts, while liberals whine about weak-kneed Obama “caving” to right-wing extremists.
“President Snippy Pants,” as William Teach calls him, evidently believes what America needs is more lectures from him:
While accusing the House GOP of wasting time by, y’know, passing legislation, our Lecturer-in-Chief uses his weekly address to issue yet another iteration of Democrat Party talking points:
Republicans in the House of Representatives just spent precious days trying to pass a plan that a majority of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate had already said they wouldn’t vote for. It’s a plan that wouldn’t solve our fiscal problems, but would force us to re-live this crisis in just a few short months. It would hold our economy captive to Washington politics once again. If anything, the past few weeks have demonstrated that’s unacceptable.
Any solution to avoid default must be bipartisan. It must have the support of both parties that were sent here to represent the American people — not just one faction of one party. . . .
Now all of us — including Republicans in the House of Representatives — need to demonstrate the same kind of responsibility that the American people show every day. The time for putting party first is over.
One hesitates to spend “precious days” (or even precious minutes) fisking this, as the hypocritical falseness of Obama’s rhetoric really ought to be self-evident.
Let us first have done with Obama’s bogus insinuation that he represents the credible voice of “responsibility.” He hasn’t put forward any detailed plan of his own. Instead of providing a budget, he gave a speech — April 13 at George Washington University — in which he dishonestly used the phrase “my budget,” and rolled out the focus-group-tested phrase “balanced approach” (i.e., code for “tax increases”).
In his GWU speech, the president recycled the old-and-busted partisan talking-point that ObamaCare “will reduce our deficit by $1 trillion” (laughably false), and then infamously asserted that his “balanced approach” would “achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over twelve years.”
I say he “infamously” made this assertion, because it stands as a historic milestone in the annals of deceptive political rhetoric. Continue reading VIDEO: The Man With No Plan Accuses House Republicans of Irresponsibility →
Dirty Harry’s Senate has passed nothing, and immediately voted down the debt-ceiling bill that the Republican-led House passed Friday:
The Senate on Friday evening rejected House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) plan to raise the debt limit, upping the ante in the game of chicken between House and Senate.
The 59-41 vote, on a motion to table the resolution passed by the House less than two hours before, ran mostly along party lines, easily reaching the simple majority required to sink legislation in the upper chamber.
Six Republicans joined Democrats to table the Boehner resolution: Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Mike Lee (Utah), Rand Paul (Ky.), and David Vitter (La.).
Boehner’s office said the Senate’s refusal to take up the House plan puts the blame on Democrats if the U.S. defaults.
“For the second time, the House has passed a reasonable, common-sense plan to raise the debt limit and cut spending and, for the second time, Sen. [Harry] Reid [D-Nev.] has tabled it,” spokesman Michael Steel said in a statement. “The responsibility to end this crisis is now entirely in the hands of Sen. Reid and President Obama.”
Barbara Espinosa at American Freedom has more on Harry Reid’s do-nothing Democrats, who haven’t passed a budget in more than two years.
UPDATE: Senate rejects Boehner plan, Reid won’t allow vote tonight on his own plan. “It’s not a plan, it’s a talking point,” says Instapundit.
UPDATE 10:33 p.m. ET: NO VOTE TONIGHT! Boehner couldn’t get enough Republican votes to pass the bill.
UPDATE 10:39 p.m. ET: Chad Pegram of Fox News got the word from GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy at 10:24 p.m. ET.
UPDATE 10:47 p.m. ET: The Hill:
House Republican leaders have postponed indefinitely a vote on Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) debt limit bill after they could not persuade enough Republicans to support the measure.
“No vote tonight,” the third-ranking House Republican, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), told reporters after leaving Boehner’s office shortly before 10:30 p.m.
The most obvious possible prediction: The Dow Jones Industrial Average will drop at least 200 points Friday.
* * * PREVIOUSLY * * *
UPDATE 9:45 p.m. ET: Jill Jackson of CBS News:
About 2 dozen pizzas were just delivered to Boehner’s office. It’s going to be a long one…
It is at times like this that I say to myself, “Maybe I should’ve stuck with that forklift-driver job I had when I was 25.” Who knows? I might have been loading-dock foreman by now . . .
UPDATE 10:00 p.m. ET: National Journal‘s informal count “showed that 22 House Republicans say they will vote no on the measure, four leaning no, and six undecided,” which would be 26 “no” or leaning “no,” meaning that Boehner is now three votes short of the majority 218 needed for passage.
Nobody ever asks my advice on things like this, but if I was in Boehner’s shoes, I’d say, “Damn the torpedoes: Call the vote!”
It would be better to have the vote and lose it, than to sit around until midnight begging for votes.
And if Boehner loses the vote? Offer his resignation. Immediately.
Because if you can’t get a majority on a key bill like this, your leadership is meaningless.
Call the vote. Win or lose. Go all in, Boehner.
UPDATE 8:15 p.m. ET: Another source on Capitol Hill says they’re currently in “limbo,” expecting to hear by 9 p.m. whether or not there will be a vote tonight. The latest word now is that 25 House Republicans are either “no” votes or leaning toward “no” — which would put Boehner two votes short of a majority for passage.
Getting in touch with my inner cynic, I guess this means that staff are busy putting earmarks into the bill. Somebody’s district is gonna get a new post office or a freeway off-ramp out of this deal, or else an aspiring senator is going to get an extra $20,000 for his 2012 campaign.
UPDATE 9:05 p.m. ET: Still no word on whether they’ll actually have the vote tonight. Moneyrunner comments:
I just watched Special Report with Brett Baier and both Stephen Hayes and Charles Krauthammer – who I admire – are insisting that if Republicans pass the bill that Speaker Boehner crafted they will be in a strong position at the negotiating table.
I have to admit that I need a lot of things explained to me when something is not glaringly obvious but I kept asking: “Why?”
Let me say this: If all you know about what’s happening is what you hear on cable-TV news, you’re probably going to be surprised when you find out — tomorrow, next week, next month — what was actually happening behind the scenes.
Whatever your opinion about this bill, don’t let yourself get worked up into a tizzy by what a bunch of talking heads are saying on TV. They get paid to pretend that we’re on the verge of the Apocalypse. Nobody’s paying you to believe them, so keep your powder dry.
Linked by That Mr. G Guy — thanks!
UPDATE 9:18 p.m. ET: OK, now the word is, they’re going to vote some time tonight, but we don’t know when yet, and it is alleged that they don’t even know whether they’ve got the votes to pass the doggone thing. When they go to a roll-call without a complete whip-count — i.e., the result still anybody’s guess — that’s when the going gets weird, and the weird turn pro.
UPDATE 7:25 p.m. ET: While we wait to find out exactly what’s going to happen tonight — will the House vote on the debt-ceiling bill or not? does Boehner have the votes to pass it? — we have a sort of cryptic message to GOP House freshmen from Sarah Palin:
Today I re-read the open letter I wrote to Republican Freshman Members of Congress in November 2010, just days after they were ushered into office in an historic landslide victory due in large part to the activism of commonsense patriots who are considered part of the Tea Party movement. I respectfully ask these GOP Freshman to re-read this letter and remember us “little people” who believed in them, donated to their campaigns, spent hours tirelessly volunteering for them, and trusted them with our votes. This new wave of public servants may recall that they were sent to D.C. for such a time as this.
What does she mean by that? Dunno. But “for such a time as this” is a quote from the Bible (Esther 4:14). Maybe it’s a code word, the secret Mama Grizzly signal or something.
And “for such a time as this,” my sources on the Hill are supposed to be answering their cell phones. IKWIMAITYD.
Please excuse the non-chronological sequence of the updates tonight, but I suppose that conveys as well as anything what a chaotic whirlwind has descended on Capitol Hill.
UPDATE 7:45 p.m. ET: Politicon links — thanks! — and also links to The Hill‘s whip count, which reports 24 Republican “no” votes. Ace of Spades notes that “some ‘long-standing’ conservative members” are reported among the “no” votes.
Linked by Mangy Redbone Hound — thanks!
UPDATE 6 p.m. ET: House Speaker John Boehner postponed the vote mere minutes before the roll call was scheduled to begin.
UPDATE 6:20 p.m. ET: It’s complete madness on Capitol Hill, folks. One GOP staffer says they got the news about the delay via an e-mail sent out by the Democrat whip team. Meanwhile, they’ve heard nothing from Republican whip, Kevin McCarthy, who is said to be still twisting arms to get votes for the Speaker’s bill.
And here’s the scary thing: McCarthy was the head of the GOP’s “Young Guns” candidate recruitment program in the 2010 mid-terms. There are freshmen who owe McCarthy big-time, so if the vote had to be delayed because he can’t promise 218 . . . Dude.
So it’s a total clusterfark in the GOP caucus at this point, although they still expect to have a vote tonight. But they’re now relying on media reports to tell them what the hell is going on with their own Republican leadership.
UPDATE 6:30 p.m. ET: Just to let you know I’m not kidding you about Republicans having to get information from media reports, one of my best Hill sources e-mailed me Major Garrett’s story from National Journal:
Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is delaying the House vote on his plan to cut the deficit, Republican and Democratic sources told National Journal on Thursday. Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s office said the vote would still take place later in the evening.
A Democratic source said only that Boehner was pushing back the vote. A senior Republican source said the House speaker, who was facing opposition in his caucus, had “delayed” the vote.
“The vote will be this evening,” said a spokesman for Cantor’s office.
You see what I’m talking about here?
A. Democrats know what Boehner’s doing before Republicans know what Boehner’s doing; and
B. Republicans don’t find out until it’s reported in the media.
Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.
UPDATE 6:45 p.m. ET: Hot Air’s got the story headlined as “BOEHNERGEDDON” — Allahpundit doing his usual “Link Everybody Except Stacy” round-up — so I’m grateful to Don Surber, Bob Belvedere, The Rhetorican and The Lonely Conservative for their linkage.
If you’re a blogger hoping to get linked at Hot Air, never bother to do any original reporting, because Allah hates bloggers who do reporting.
PREVIOUSLY (5:05 p.m. ET): (Original headline was “BREAKING: House Roll Call on Boehner Bill Expected to Begin at 5:45 p.m. ET”)
So says my source on Capitol Hill. Love it or hate it, House GOP leaders are twisting every arm to pass it. We’ll have complete updated coverage here, of course, but I wanted to share this video of Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) announcing her support of the bill:
Few freshmen in Congress can rival Ellmers’s credentials as the total Tea Party conservative, so her support of the bill is highly significant.
BTW, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped another 61 points today. I blame Harry Reid.
UPDATE 5:45 p.m. ET (Smitty): Via iOwnTheWorld, Priceless Princess Pelosi:
“What we’re trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget. We’re trying to save life on this planet as we know it today.”
Thanks, lady. Had you condescended to budget when you were running matters, your remarks wouldn’t resemble something the World’s Youngest Blogger just did.
by Smitty
The Blaze notes that even the overpaid prima donnas of the NFL managed to get their act together and finish negotiations.
Unlike the clowns inside the flat bowl outlined by the beltway.
<rant>
Other than the effort to win re-election, these political football players don’t have enough skin in the game. I’d like to see the budget law deadlines codified, and none of these creeps getting paid if they can’t do their flipping job. Will Dingy Harry Reid reach 1000 days with no budget?
As a thought experiment, consider docking the Senate Majority Leader and the rest of these creeps day-for-day while they haven’t done their job. That’s not a precedent to go setting, but the threat of it might trigger some useful motion. Screw you, Nevada, for afflicting the rest of the country with this knucklehead.
</rant>
When a Democrat says something that’s actually true, that’s what we call “news,” and Rep. Pete Stark calls the debt-ceiling debate a “charade.”
“Charade,” “kabuki dance” — to-may-to, to-mah-to — Obama and Harry Reid are putting on a political pageant that doesn’t deceive anyone with enough brains to see what’s really going on.
Andy at AOSHQ calls Obama The Greatest Orator Ever™ — which is what we call a “joke.”
The way Obama repeated the same stale talking points — “balanced approach,” “millionaires and billionaires,” etc. — struck Charles Krauthammer as the height of cynicism: