If I were the editor of this Reid Wilson piece, I would have asked for at least one original quote on the record. Nevertheless, its reporting is decent and its analysis is correct.
Privately, House Republicans have been driving home the message that a failure to increase the debt ceiling would be a disaster. Sources said Boehner has been “aggressive,” in one aide’s words, in articulating the need to reach a deal.
In a presentation to the House Republican Conference on Friday, Jay Powell, a former Under Secretary at the Treasury Department under George H.W. Bush and a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center, laid out just what would happen if a deal isn’t reached.
Time is winding down before the U.S. reaches the limits of its deficit spending. For Republican leadership, the goals in the critical week ahead will not only be to reach a compromise with the White House, but to lay the groundwork so that their own members accept the eventual deal. Given the reluctance of the membership itself to go along, and the pressure emanating from outside activists, it’s less clear whether it will be harder to reach agreement with Obama or with the new class in town.
What’s missing is the arithmetic. We need to know the size of the Michele Bachmann contingent. In other words, how many House Republicans are actually going to vote against raising the debt ceiling as a matter of principle, regardless of the nature of the deal, the consequences for the country, and for the global economy? Several dozen have pledged to do so. This article paints the House leadership’s problem as exclusively one of trying to convert their own members. But it is likely that their problem is more difficult than that. They have 240 members in the House and need a majority of the 433 sitting members (217) to vote to give the president the authority to raise the debt ceiling. Once the infrastructure is in place, the House Republicans will be free to vote against actually raising it. If the Michele Bachmann contingent exceeds 23 members, they will need votes from Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats. And, regardless of how the numbers shake out in their own caucus, they have to deal with the Senate, which the Democrats nominally control.
For the president, who has insisted that there be debt reduction in this deal that includes some tax revenue, his leverage comes from the lack of unity among House Republicans. Boehner has a hard enough time convincing his own caucus to raise the debt ceiling without having to try to get them to agree to some tax increases.
He will hold some symbolic votes next week that will demonstrate what the House would do if it had the power to act alone. But, his real negotiations will be with Pelosi. Unless Boehner can convert more than a dozen members who have pledged not to raise the debt ceiling under any obtainable circumstances, he’s going to have to appease Pelosi to get the votes he needs to avoid a catastrophe.
Pelosi’s leverage is somewhat limited, however, as she doesn’t want to take on blame for a failure to pass something before the August 2nd deadline. It’s a perception game. Boehner has to pass something. If he can’t, he’ll take most of the blame, even if it fails in part because the Democrats wouldn’t agree to the deal.
The Republicans hold the majority, and it is their responsibility to get something done.
It is right here at the end-game where the Democrats can press their advantage to get revenue. Managed properly, that is exactly what will happen. The trick is to find the sweet-spot that extracts the most ransom for Democratic votes without making a deal impossible for Boehner to sell. In theory, Boehner could pass something with as few as 25 Republican votes. In reality, he could never find 25 members to agree to stick their neck out like that.
