At a time when there’s increasing pessimism and dismay over whether the United States can avoid a House and Tea Party conservative Republican generated catastrophic default on American debts, there are now glimmers of hope that perhaps there can be a solution and that some Republicans and Democrats trying to find a solution in good-faith could eventually prevail. One sign: Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins seemingly rejected compromise plan to avoid a debt default seems to be rising again.
The operative question becomes: is this a boomlet, or a boom that could avoid the expected Wall Street BAM! if some conservatives get their virtual wish and the U.S. defaults unless President Barack Obama in effect gives into what Obama calls political ransom demands?
Democratic leaders in the Senate may have rejected a bipartisan push among more junior members to come up with a compromise to Capitol Hill’s fiscal standoff, but at least a dozen senators working behind the scenes Sunday were still rallying around a plan led by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
It’s unclear how the effort has changed since Senate Democratic leaders shot it down Saturday in favor of direct talks between Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). But the basic idea was to fund the government through March at the levels specified for 2013 in the 2011 budget deal, and to raise the debt ceiling enough to last through January, to give time to negotiate a longer-term budget. The plan would leave Obamacare alone, but replace for two years a device tax that helps fund the law.
Even though Reid and his fellow leaders rejected the idea — objecting both to the short-term debt limit hike and to keeping deeper across-the-board spending cuts in place through March — it got a new burst of support on Sunday.
Which means it could provide the seed of some kind of compromise — one the Senate could pass hoping it’d put on pressure for the House to affirm it or for House Speaker John Boehner opt to be a House Speaker looking out for the national good, rather than being most concerned about holding to his Speakers’ job and not irking powerful Tea Party members.
Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), both praised the bipartisan push in Senate floor speeches.
“We had a group of folks that had an idea. I thought it was a good starting place, candidly, with six Republicans and six Democrats, who had an idea of a way to move beyond this,” said Corker.
“I want to associate myself with the effort underway by Sen. Collins from Maine and Sen. [Amy] Klobuchar from Minnesota (D), Sen. Mark Pryor (D) from Arkansas and others on both sides of the aisle that have been working throughout the evening, the night, early morning hours, talking, trying to find a way forward,” said Landrieu.
A Democratic aide confirmed the talks were ongoing and attracting fresh interest, but was unwilling to go on the record, citing the leadership’s opposition.
Corker, who like Landrieu said he supports the talks between Reid and McConnell, said he believes the bipartisan effort was blocked by Democratic leaders because many in their party want to undo the spending cuts that remain in the Collins compromise, which would fund discretionary programs at $988 billion in a continuation of this year’s sequestered budget.“Let’s face it. We all know what happens around here. Two nights ago the White House weighed in, and leadership on the Democratic side pulled back from there, asked the 12 folks not to have a press conference yesterday to announce what their efforts were,” Corker said, adding that Democrats were now guilty of the same “overreach” he said Republicans in the House committed by starting the funding showdown in a bid to target Obamacare.
Still, CNN’s Greg Clary notes that these days talking itself is being hyped as a “breathrough.” Or, perhaps more accurately, talking with the other side versus talking about them:
The bar seems to be set pretty low on Capitol Hill, as one top lawmaker says just having Democrats and Republicans talking is a “breakthrough” – even though the two sides don’t have a deal in the midst of a multifaceted budget crisis.
Talks both on ending the government shutdown and on avoiding the debt ceiling have shifted to the Senate, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, along with other top senators, began discussions on Saturday.
“It’s a breakthrough. Hard to imagine, but it’s a breakthrough. We’ve reached a point where House Republicans and their leadership have stepped to the sidelines. They’re not part of this at this point,” Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democratic whip, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
As for getting a deal by Thursday, when the nation does hit the debt ceiling, Durbin said he thinks Congress will ultimately get the job done.
“I’m a hopeful person. I believe we can do it. I hope sensible people prevail, because at this point it’s not just a shutdown and all of the damage it’s caused, but if we default on our debt it will have a dramatic impact on the savings account, on the retirement account of average Americans,” Durbin said.
But with mega polarization, and ideological news media and Internet websites seemingly with a vested interest to call any compromise “caving” and threaten political reprisals, is this song from South Pacific what’s fitting at this time?
graphic via shutterstock.com
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.