The choice for Senate Democrats is this: Pass Cut, Cap, Balance (CCB) now, or after you get jack-hammered for blowing through the debt ceiling. There will be no other deal. This is the only way the House will accept any raise of the debt ceiling. Go ahead–call our bluff. We don’t even believe in your lurid doomsday story.
The Tea Party did not cause this problem, and did not push it to the twelfth hour, but we will solve it. I am aware of the feckless Gang of Six proposal, which will never pass the House, and the now-fading McConnell plan, which will never pass the House.
The House of Representatives holds a veto on money, and after the democrats and the GOP leadership abused conservative principles so badly during the CR debacle, there is no flexibility on this. The House GOP is currently enjoying a power surge with the Tea Party largely supporting them as they stand more firmly with each passing day against the President’s seriously unbalanced insistence on taxing and spending, taxing and spending. Do not expect the House GOP leadership to give that up.
So to the Democrat Senators in the worlds “foremost deliberative body” who just tabled a motion to save the world’s largest economy from the mother of all something or other… this is the only game in town. The deal you see next time will look like this one. Exactly like it.
