[Senator Harry Reid,
the majority leader, had convened the Senate at noon , then moved to a
procedural vote on his own proposal for raising the debt
ceiling. Senate Republicans had been filibustering that plan, which
House Republicans rejected on Saturday, and the vote on breaking the filibuster
fell 10 votes short of the 60 votes needed under Senate rules.Even so, Mr. Reid
said before the cloture vote that he was “cautiously optimistic” that an
agreement could be reached today that would make it possible for the Senate to
amend his bill and gain bipartisan approval in both chambers.]
By Jennifer Steinhauer And Carl Hulse
 |
| Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky walked to the Senate floor on Sunday. |
But
without a compromise in hand, the divided Senate could not break a filibuster and
went wearily into recess while the leaders resumed their search for something
that could pass.
Senator Harry Reid,
the majority leader, had convened the Senate at noon , then moved to a procedural vote on his own proposal for
raising the debt
ceiling. Senate Republicans had been filibustering that plan, which
House Republicans rejected on Saturday, and the vote on breaking the filibuster
fell 10 votes short of the 60 votes needed under Senate rules.Even so, Mr. Reid
said before the cloture vote that he was “cautiously optimistic” that an
agreement could be reached today that would make it possible for the Senate to
amend his bill and gain bipartisan approval in both chambers.
But Mr.
Reid said that “there are a number of issues that must be resolved.”
“Our
optimism in days past has been really stomped on,” he said.
Senator Mitch
McConnell of Kentucky
Speaking
on the CNN program “State of the Union ,” Mr. McConnell said the emerging deal included as much as
$3 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years, with much of that to be decided
later this year by the joint Congressional committee. Senator Charles E.
Schumer of New York
“I feel a
lot better today about the ability to avoid default than I did even yesterday
morning,” he said. “And default would have such disastrous consequences for our
nation for decades to come,” he continued. “The fact that our leaders are
talking, though hardly anyone agrees with everything that’s come up, is a good
thing.”
The first
indication that the hard lines were softening came Saturday afternoon, when the
two leading Congressional Republicans announced that they had reopened fiscal
talks with the White House and expected their last-ditch drive to produce a
compromise. Following the House’s sharp rejection of Mr. Reid’s proposal, Mr.
McConnell said he and Speaker John A. Boehner were “now fully engaged” in
efforts with the White House to find a resolution that would tie an increase in
the debt limit to spending cuts and other conditions.
“I’m
confident and optimistic that we’re going to get an agreement in the very near
future and resolve this crisis in the best interests of the American people,”
said Mr. McConnell, who noted that he was personally talking to both Mr. Obama
and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a favorite partner in past
negotiations.
Mr. Boehner,
who would have to steer a compromise through the House, said he based his
confidence on the sense that “we’re dealing with reasonable, responsible people
who want this crisis to end as quickly as possible.”
A
Democratic official with knowledge of the talks said that Mr. McConnell called
Mr. Biden early Saturday afternoon, the first conversation between the two men
since Wednesday. The official said they talked at least four more times on
Saturday as they tried to work out an agreement.
The deal
they were discussing, this person said, resembled the bill that Mr. Boehner
pushed through the House the House on Friday more than it did the one that Mr.
Reid had proposed.
It would
immediately raise the debt ceiling by about $1 trillion, accompanied by a similar
range of spending cuts, and set up a bipartisan committee that would work to
find deeper reductions in the deficit in exchange for a second debt limit
increase that would extend through the 2012 elections.
In this
version, which was still being negotiated overnight, the new committee’s
failure to win enactment of its proposal could set off automatic spending cuts
across the board, including to entitlement programs. But how that “trigger”
would work was a sticking point, and other ideas were swirling around the
Capitol as lawmakers searched for a way to avoid default. One of Mr. Reid’s top
lieutenants said he saw at least a glimmer of hope.
But
anxiety was building in many corners, including among Wall Street investors
worried about the effects on the markets, and active-duty soldiers concerned
about their paychecks.
After Mr.
McConnell sounded a hopeful note on Saturday, Mr. Reid called the senators to
the floor to hear him dispute assertions by his Republican counterpart and
accuse Republicans of failing to enter into serious negotiations even as the
Treasury risked running out of money to pay all its bills after Tuesday.
“The
speaker and Republican leader should know that merely saying you have an
agreement in front of television cameras doesn’t make it so,” Mr. Reid said
after returning from a visit to the White House with Representative Nancy
Pelosi of California
Trying to
build momentum for his own proposal, Mr. Reid and fellow Democrats were working
to win over Republican senators to support his plan to raise the debt ceiling
through 2012 and circumvent Mr. McConnell.
“Americans
are watching us and demanding a result that is balanced,” Mr. Reid said.
The Senate
Democrats’ efforts were set back Saturday when 43 of the 47 Republican senators
signed a letter to Mr. Reid saying they would not back his proposal, which
would allow a $2.4 trillion increase in the debt ceiling in two stages while
establishing a new Congressional committee to explore deeper spending cuts. The
numbers signaled that without changes in the plan, Mr. Reid would not be able
to overcome a Republican filibuster, which requires 60 votes.
House
Republicans signaled their disapproval of the Reid plan by holding a symbolic
vote on Saturday, rejecting it by a 246 to 173 vote, in a move intended to show
it had no chance of passing in that chamber. About a dozen Democrats joined
Republicans in rejecting the Reid plan.
The
pre-emptive vote could strengthen Mr. McConnell’s hand as he seeks to shape any
final compromise.
At the
White House and in talks in Congressional offices and corridors, most of the
attention was focused on finding a way to define the precise conditions under
which the president could get a second increase in the debt limit that would be
needed early in 2012 under both Republican and Democratic proposals. Officials
in both parties said another idea that had surfaced was to require a change in Social
Securitypolicy if the new committee deadlocked, providing an
incentive for the new committee to act on its own.
Under the
proposal that the Congressional Budget Office said could save more than $100
billion over 10 years, a different measure of inflation would be used to
calculate the annual cost-of-living adjustment in Social Security benefits.
Supporters say the alternative measure of inflation is more accurate because it
reflects what happens when prices rise; advocates for the elderly say the
proposal is a backdoor way of cutting benefits.
Members of
both parties took the floor to push for compromise, noting that the two sides
were not far apart on major elements of their deficit-reduction plans.
“Failure
should not be an option for us in this case, and it’s time we started finding
common ground,” said Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia.
The
unusual Saturday session followed a week of brinkmanship on Capitol Hill. On
Friday, Mr. Boehner managed to pass his own House bill, along party lines, just
a day after suspending the vote as the Republican leadership tried frantically
to line up enough support for passage. But the Senate swiftly rejected that
plan late Friday.
While some
of the back and forth between the House and Senate and the party leaders was
typical of the late stages of a negotiation, the combative and unyielding tone
in both chambers created pessimism among the rank and file about the prospects
that a final agreement could be struck and cleared before Tuesday.
Even if a
measure is able to win significant bipartisan endorsement in the Senate, the
reception in the House could be different. But how to push a plan by House
conservatives remained a major question mark.
At the
Treasury Department, Secretary Timothy F. Geithner met with top advisers on
Saturday to discuss contingency plans for managing the financial consequences
of Congressional inaction. “No one will be pleased,” said one adviser, who
spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The
Treasury Department calculates that the government will exhaust its ability to
borrow money at the end of Tuesday and will be forced to pay its bills from a
dwindling pile of cash. Independent analysts estimate the government has enough
money on hand to cover all of its bills for another week, more or less, before
it starts missing payments.
Mr. Obama
has repeatedly called on Congress to raise the borrowing limit, known as the
debt ceiling, by Tuesday to avoid any uncertainty about the government’s
ability to meet its obligations. Financial markets are particularly concerned
about the payment of interest on the federal debt. A default on those
obligations could precipitate a global financial crisis.
The
painful negotiations to resolve the crisis have caught the attention of troops
in Afghanistan
In Kandahar Helmand Provinces Washington Afghanistan
“We’re
going to continue to come to work,” he said.
