Politico...
As debt ceiling deadline looms, default or compromise?
By Carrie Budoff Brown & Manu Raju
7/29/11
Washington awoke Friday morning to a possibility that has been widely
shrugged off for weeks, but suddenly seems chillingly real: Could the
government actually default?
The delay and disintegration of a House vote on the debt limit late
Thursday is the latest sign that Congress is mired in legislative
gridlock just four days before the Aug. 2 deadline for lifting the
country’s borrowing authority.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) vowed to return to his bill Friday,
but Thursday’s chaos — hours of private meetings, praying and postponed
votes — raises fresh concerns that the country is stumbling toward a
possible default and downgrade of its credit rating.
“I felt for some time that a default was likely,” Rep. Barney Frank
(D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee,
told POLITICO. “Now, it’s more likely than not.”
Despite the disarray, Democrats and Republicans actually aren’t that
far apart on a possible compromise. It’s really just a question of
whether the White House and congressional leaders, particularly the
House speaker, choose to seal the deal.
Democrats predicted the postponed vote would provide the leverage they
need to convince Boehner to take a different course, one that involves
striking an agreement that can pass the House and Senate with
bipartisan support.
But Boehner remains the wild card. He will quickly need to decide
whether he should push a bill through the House with Democratic votes —
a move certain to infuriate conservatives already angry with the
direction of the talks. That appears to be the only way Congress will
avert a default.
But Boehner has shown no willingness to take this step, alarming the
White House and Senate leaders who have been quietly shaping the
contents of a deal that could move through Congress rapidly by the
deadline or within a few days of it.
“Another day wasted while the clock ticks,” White House Communications
Director Dan Pfeiffer wrote Thursday night on Twitter. “Now is the time
to compromise so we can solve this problem and reduce the deficit.”
Any potential agreement would still be made largely on Republican terms
— the culmination of months of concessions by President Barack Obama,
who has agreed to Boehner’s demands to link the debt limit vote to
deficit reduction, cut spending by more than $2 trillion and abandon
efforts to boost tax revenue in the near term.
Read the rest of the story at Politico
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