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Good Morning!
Morning News
House Puts Off Debt Vote As Boehner Fails
Just minutes from a roll call vote on the plan pushed by Speaker John A. Boehner, Republicans stunned the House by interrupting the debate and turning to routine matters while Mr. Boehner and his lieutenants tried to pressure reluctant conservatives into backing their plan. The House then went into a recess and shortly before 11 p.m., the leadership announced that no vote would be held Thursday.
It was unclear if the leadership intended to reconfigure the measure and try again Friday, but senior lawmakers were taking procedural steps to do so.
As debt default deadline looms, default or compromise?
Democrats predicted the postponed vote would provide the leverage they need to convince Boehner to take a different course, one that involves striking an agreement that can pass the House and Senate with bipartisan support.
Despite the disarray, Democrats and Republicans actually aren’t that far apart on a possible compromise. It’s really just a question of whether the White House and congressional leaders, particularly the House speaker, choose to seal the deal.
John Boehner Failed. Now What?
Perhaps the primary wild card is what happens when the market opens today. If Wall Street assesses this as yet another day of Washington nonsense en route to an inevitable deal, then congressional leaders will find they have a bit more time to dawdle and negotiate. If the market decides that Boehner's inability to control his caucus is evidence that things really are different this time, it could drop precipitously. If that happens, the leadership of both parties might dispense with the legislation meant to message and figure out how to pass the legislation meant to lift the debt ceiling. It would be about time.
It's really not that hard to see what the final deal will eventually look like. And in a sense, last night's vote -- or, more to the point, non-vote -- is irrelevant to it. Boehner was aways going to need to assemble a coalition of more moderate Republicans and Democrats to get a deal. Last night's vote was a referendum on Boehner, but it had little to do with reaching an actual deal. So the optimistic spin is that the GOP's failure will move the Republican leadership to embrace the bipartisan strategy they were always going to have to adopt at the end. The pessimistic spin is that they now know pushing a compromise bill through the House could truly harm their careers and will hide from it. But they can only hide for so long. That's the problem with being in the leadership. Eventually, you have to lead.
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