This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, July 28, 2011 - WASHINGTON - With House Republicans divided over their own leader's plan and congressional Democrats sweating the fast-approaching deadline, the road to solving the debt-ceiling crisis seemed likely to turn on a last-ditch compromise.
"We're hoping that, once [both sides] have tried their legislative options and haven't succeeded -- and we are running out of time -- that we'll be in a better bargaining mode," said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., on Wednesday. "We'll have to bring all the [House and Senate] leaders in to get this done."
Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat and a member of the Senate "Gang of Six" working toward a deficit-reduction compromise, told the Beacon that the Senate was likely to block both the Republican option developed by Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and a compromise proposal by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., which have some elements in common.
In the meantime, House Republicans were embroiled in an internal debate over Boehner's plan, which did not meet the demands of many tea-party conservatives. In the Missouri delegation, Reps. Todd Akin, R-Wildwood, and Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, were moving in opposite directions -- with Emerson saying she was "cautiously optimistic" that a debt-ceiling compromise could be reached and Akin holding out for sharper budget slashing even if it means missing Tuesday's deadline set by the U.S. Treasury Department.
Akin told the Beacon that he expected to oppose Boehner's revised plan -- scheduled for a House vote Thursday -- because "it does not deal with the long-term deficit problem." But Emerson, who co-chairs the center-right "Tuesday Group" that could help support Boehner's plan, said a compromise needs to be achieved to avoid risking default and a downgrade of the government's credit rating.
On the Senate side, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., pleaded for compromise and accused unbending House Republicans of "playing Russian roulette with our economy." She is backing Reid's effort to combine spending cuts with a debt limit increase and the creation of a dozen-member House-Senate panel to suggest longer-term legislative solutions to the deficit problem.
Also seeing the need for compromise was Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., who has insisted for months that he would not back a debt-ceiling increase unless it was tied to structural budget reforms. He said Wednesday that Congress should "move forward" and agree on a plan, with his preference being the Boehner proposal as the best of the emerging options.
"If you're going to get something done, you're going to have a level of compromise," Blunt told reporters. "We're not going to have spending cuts at the level I'd like to see, and we're also not going to have tax increases -- and the president needs to understand that." He predicted that Boehner's plan would likely pass the House.
Blunt's bottom-line prediction: "There will be no default on the debt. It is critical that the United States fulfill its obligations. We entered into this debt with the commitment we pay it off, and we will."
For his part, Durbin told the Beacon that Reid's plan "is the likely vehicle in the Senate" but at this point would get no Republican votes. He predicted that the Senate would reject the Boehner plan (if it is approved by the House) and that the Reid plan probably won't get the 60 Senate votes needed to block a threatened filibuster.
House Republicans Divided on Boehner Plan
The most divisive debates were taking place in the House, where Boehner's call for unity has been met this week by a schism. In a phone interview with the Beacon and in an appearance on MSNBC, Emerson said compromise is needed in a divided government -- with Republicans controlling only the House and Democrats in charge of the Senate and White House. The Tuesday Group, which she co-chairs, includes 45 centrist Republicans.
"Never in the history of this country have we increased the debt ceiling and simultaneously cut spending by an equal or greater amount. I think that's a huge success for my party," Emerson said.
She said a growing number of House freshmen are warming to Boehner's approach. "It's really an educational process, and the more House members understand the details, I think the easier it is for them to go along with it." She added: "I believe that many of my freshman [House] colleagues now understand that."
Emerson said, "The Reid and Boehner plans share similarities. They both have the joint committee. They both call for cuts of equal amounts. The differences are basically that ours is a two-step process and that Reid's plan does have some funny math in it."
Republican leaders were working late Wednesday for votes for Boehner's proposal, which was being retooled after the Congressional Budget Office said it would cut spending less than he had estimated. Boehner called his approach "the best opportunity we have to hold the president's feet to the fire."
Akin told the Beacon that he would be "kind of surprised" if Boehner's retooled plan does not pass, but he said he will likely oppose it. "I'm not convinced this is the right way for us to go," he said. "All of the normal functions of government...are being financed this year by debt. We have an addiction to deficit spending."
The best solution, Akin suggested, would be a constitutional balanced budget amendment, which was included as part of the "Cut, Cap and Balance" bill that the House approved last week. The Senate later tabled the legislation. "The bill that's being proposed by the Speaker [Boehner] does not deal with that long-term problem," Akin said.
Rather than approve inadequate legislation, Akin said, he would prefer to "allow the government to go into a slowdown -- not a shutdown, a slowdown. There's enough money to pay for all of our securities and interest so that we don't default on our debt. There's also enough money ... to fund Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the defense budget." He added, however, that "there would have to be tough choices on a number of things," including federal salaries.
"If we create some disruption and some difficulties in the economy for a couple of months, that would be a price that's worth paying to prevent us from going into freefall and chaos" as a result of deficit spending. But what about default and the downgrading of the government's credit rating? "If I were a rating agency, I would have downgraded our debt before, when you figure the whole federal government's function is being funded by deficit spending," Akin said.
He predicted that "no matter what we do, they're going to downgrade. And certainly there is a danger there." But he said rating agencies likely would be more impressed by "a real effort to actually solve the problem with a balanced budget amendment, rather than ... putting a Band-Aid on things and saying, 'Well, just postpone it.'"
As for McCaskill's "Russian roulette" criticism of tea-party House Republicans, Akin, who hopes to be the GOP nominee facing McCaskill in 2012, responded: "I would say the one who built the gun, put the bullet in the chamber and cocked the hammer was Claire McCaskill" because she voted for the stimulus plan and the Obama health-care overhaul.
Many Senators Edging Toward Compromise
While the House was sharply divided in an ideological battle, senators seemed to be edging towards a compromise -- with the exact details as yet unclear. Durbin said that the final negotiations would likely occur after both the Boehner and Reid options are defeated in the Senate.
"Boehner has to see if he can get his bill passed in the House. If it passes the House, we will defeat it over here" in the Senate, Durbin told the Beacon. "Harry Reid is going to call his bill in the Senate. It is not likely to get any Republican votes, and there aren't enough Democrats to pass it."
Then would come the real compromise, Durbin suggested. "At that point, we have to return to the table and see if there is some middle ground. It's not easy, and we're anxious to get to it" as soon as possible.
The chair of the Senate Budget Committee, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., also told reporters that -- given the lack of House Republican backing for Reid's bill -- "there is clearly going to have to be a compromise." He said "conversations... are ongoing" toward that end.
One major sticking point is President Barack Obama's demand that government borrowing power be extended at least through the 2012 election. On Wednesday, Conrad said the differences might be bridged by altering the powers of a new committee that -- under both the Boehner and Reid plans -- would be set up to find additional budget savings.
In a weekly session with radio reporters, McCaskill said the outline of Reid's plan showed that it had met many of the early demands by Boehner and other Republicans, and she pointed out that Reid's and Boehner's bills have many similarities.
The Senate leader's approach is "not much of a compromise -- it's basically acceding to the positions that Speaker Boehner set out at the beginning of this debate," McCaskill said, with the main difference being that Boehner's would require a second debate on the debt limit in six months or so.
McCaskill was highly critical of tea-party House Republicans who do not want to compromise. "The folks that have come here after the election last November need to understand that we do not do the American people a service by refusing to compromise, because that is, in fact, how you solve hard problems in our democracy," she said.
In a separate telephone session with reporters, Blunt -- a former House minority and majority whip -- pointed out that compromise is sometimes needed in legislative debates. "Everyone needs to understand the way our government works; one side does not get to decide exactly what happens."
Blunt said Boehner's proposal was preferable to Reid's outline, and he said he did not plan to vote for Reid's bill when it comes to a Senate vote.