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Politico...
All
eyes now on John Boehner and Harry
Reid
By David Rogers
7/24/11
With
markets waking, Washington’s debt
standoff worsened significantly Sunday amid recriminations and distrust
just
eight days before the real threat on an unprecedented default.
Having
broken off talks last Friday
with the White House, Speaker John Boehner is still trying to achieve
much of
the same $3 trillion package in a two-stage process tied to raising the
debt
ceiling in increments of $900 billion first and then about $1.6
trillion next
year.
But
on the eve of a Monday Republican
conference, Boehner’s would-be Senate partner, Majority Leader Harry
Reid, was
called to the White House on Sunday and then came out swinging,
accusing the
speaker of taking a “my-way-or-the-highway approach” that could never
be
acceptable to the Senate nor to President Barack Obama.
“Tonight,
talks broke down,” Reid
(D-Nev.) said. “Speaker Boehner’s plan, no matter how he tries to dress
it up,
is simply a short-term plan, and is, therefore, a non-starter in the
Senate and
with the president.”
Reid
said he had begun drafting his
own $2.7 trillion deficit reduction plan and urged Boehner to join him.
But
Republicans reacted angrily, saying Reid had been working with them
Sunday
afternoon up to the White House meeting and the sudden change-of-heart
was
dictated by Obama, jilted by Boehner but a major force in the whole
struggle.
“Sen.
Reid took the bipartisan plan to
the White House and the president said no,” said a Republican aide
familiar
with the talks. A second leadership aide put it more bluntly, saying
the
speaker had 218 votes in the House for his proposal, while Reid and
Obama don’t
yet have 60 votes for any alternative in the Senate.
Indeed,
since breaking off talks with
the White House, Boehner has kept open lines to Obama, and the two men
talked
Sunday. But at this stage, the Boehner-Reid working relationship may be
even
more crucial, and in a conference call with Republicans on Sunday,
Boehner had
seemed to give a nod to Reid by emphasizing that any legislative
strategy has
to pass the Senate as well.
“We’ve
seen this coming all year long.
But here’s the challenge: To stop [Obama], we need a vehicle that can
pass in
both houses,” Boehner said.
Read
the rest of the story at Politico
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