Breaking News
House Republican leaders, seeking to placate conservative members of their rank and file, are pursuing a separate plan to open the federal government and raise the country's debt ceiling, while Senate leaders grow increasingly confident that they are close to an agreement to end the standoff.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who have worked through the weekend and into this week hammering out the details of a potential compromise, met at the start of the day this morning behind closed doors.
After the meeting, Reid said on the Senate floor that the talks have been "productive" and he is "confident" a deal will be struck this week.
At the same time, however, House Republicans now plan to present their own plan, building off the work of Senate leaders, but adding new sweeteners that could help more conservative members get on board with a compromise.
House leaders met with rank-and-file members about the new plan for nearly two hours this morning.
The House plan would likely include more changes to President Obama's health care law, including a delay in a tax on medical devices and a provision that would force members of Congress, their staff and cabinet members to get their health insurance from exchanges.
The dueling plans, however, are in agreement on two important terms: the length of a debt-limit increase and government funding. The differences revolve largely around which provisions of the president's health care law will be changed, and which changes will be acceptable to both the White House and House Republicans.
The two chambers would need to reconcile any differences before the Oct. 17 deadline in order to avoid reaching the debt ceiling.
The White House indefinitely put off a meeting with congressional leaders at the White House Monday afternoon to give lawmakers more time to hammer out the details of a compromise.
The move was viewed as a positive sign that an end to the government shutdown that has so far lasted 15 days is near. And a deal would also raise the debt limit by the Thursday deadline.
The broad contours of the agreement include funding the government until Jan. 15 and raising the debt limit through February 7.
Though those terms would take these debates largely off the table though the holiday season, it would only kick the can down the road. Eventually, lawmakers will face a similar need to both extend funding for the government and raise the debt ceiling in 2014.
The deal could also include some provisions that address the president's health care law, but the negotiations notably exclude any of the demands Republicans initially made to either defund or delay the law's central provisions.
It represents an about-face for Republicans who have been saddled in public polling with an overwhelming majority of the blame for the shutdown. And it is unlikely to please Tea Party conservatives who still insist that significant alterations to the Affordable Care Act must be part of any budget deal.
On Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who led the Tea Party charge in the Senate, said he would reserve judgment until he knew the full details of a potential agreement.
"I want to wait to see what the details are," Cruz said.
And a potential deal could face an uphill battle in the House of Representatives.
Monday night as Senate leadership left the Capitol optimistic about progress that had been made in negotiations, Cruz met with nearly two dozen House Republicans at a popular Capitol Hill hangout, Tortilla Coast, to strategize how they would respond to the emerging deals.
Cruz's office confirmed to ABC News that he attended the meeting but would not say what was discussed.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll Monday found that dissatisfaction with the party is accelerating. Seventy-four percent of Americans disapprove of the Republicans' handling of the budget crisis, compared with 63 percent two weeks ago and 70 percent last week.
The numbers in other polls have also been frighteningly bleak for Republicans. A ThursdayNBC/Wall Street Journal poll gave the Republican Party the worst approval numbers in the poll's history. And it found that support for Obama's health care law has improved since Oct. 1, when people could go online to sign up for insurance coverage.
No comments:
Post a Comment