Congress could begin voting on debt solutions this week
The Debt limit negotiations lead by our President hit
more road blocks this week as the “big eight” lawmakers made trips to the White
House almost daily to meet with the
President and his team on our looming debt limit crisis. By mid-week,
the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had unveiled a plan he named
“plan B” and only wants it to be implemented if the debt negotiators ultimately
fail to come to an agreement as to how to raise our debt limit. The plan would
allow the President up to three automatic increases of our debt ceiling. These
three increases would occur between now and November of 2012. The first increase
would be limited to $600B, followed by $900B and then if necessary, a final
$900B. These automatic increases must be accompanied by spending cuts of at
least $1 dollar more than the debt limit dollar amount. The only way that
Congress could block any of these debt increases would be if 2/3rd’s
of the membership of both the House and Senate vote to block the increase. Then
the President could veto the disapproval legislation and Congress would have to
over ride the President’s veto. This would require another vote in Congress of at
least 2/3rd’s of both Houses of Congress to vote to disapprove the
debt increase, notwithstanding the objection of the President. This in effect
would allow for incremental debt increases and up to six Congressional votes
total between now and the Novemeber, 2012 elections.
The House GOP are not in
favor of the McConnell “plan B” proposal as of this writing. Consequently, the
House Speaker, John Boehner (R-OH) is scheduling a vote on the cut, cap and
balance bill, HR 2560 by Cong. Chaffetz(R-UT) and others. This will require
Congress to cut spending, cap their rate of spending and then to pass an
amendment to our Constitution that requires the Federal Government to balance
its budget annually. Since 49 other states have the same requirement, if the
balanced budget idea would ever pass Congress, there is a good chance that
states would ratify it in rather quick fashion. However, many hill watchers
believe passing this Constitutional amendment in Congress, which requires 2/3rd’s
of both the House and Senate to support, will be a tall order.
In addition to voting on the cut, cap and balance
legislation, the House will continue passing appropriations bills with the
Legislative Branch appropriations bill scheduled this week on the House floor.
The House is also scheduled to pass the 21st extension of the authorization of the
Federal Aviation Administration. This agency hasn’t been funded on an annual
basis for over 4 years. This extension would fund the agency through September
16, 2011. Also the House is preparing to pass HR 1315, which curbs some of the
authority given to our federal government under the Dodd-Frank Financial reform
bill.
The Senate of the United States will continue to
debate their first appropriations bill since 2009, that being the Military
Construction appropriations bill. The Senate has had to plow through questions
by the GOP targeting the Senate democrats as to why and how the Senate is
debating any of the appropriations bills since they haven’t passed an overall Budget resolution for two years in
a row. In a statement by Sen. Sessions (R-AL) he said: “Congress has few
responsibilities greater than the requirement to pass a budget each year.
Sadly, the democrat Majority has refused to complete this fundamental task in
806 days.” As part of the Congressional Budget act, it is a violation of the
act to pass an appropriations bill absent a budget since you can’t know how to
be good stewards of the taxpayer’s money if you don’t have a plan. The Senate
raised a budget point of order against the Military Construction appropriations
bill using this very logic but the Senate democrats voted to waive the budget
requirement. The vote
passed with all Senate democrats supporting the waiver including three Senate
Republicans. They were Sens. Kirk (R-IL), Brown (R-MA) and Senator Cochran
(R-MS).
Senator McConnell will continue to work on his “plan
B” proposal this week while the Senate chamber debate will be focused on the Military
Construction appropriations bill. Many believe that the Senate Minority Leader
could be successful in negotiating a deal with Sen. Reid (R-NV) on some sort of
variation of his automatic debt limit increase plan. They are working to come
up with additional language that will charge an outside debt commission to
construct spending cuts and caps forcing some sort of vote in Congress on their
recommendation by the end of the year. A vote on a Constitutional amendment to
balance the budget is also expected to be a part of the deal.
Stay tuned to hear how this week’s White House debt
meeting progress while the House debates the cut, cap and balance bill and the
Senate Leaders tinker with the so-called “plan B” proposal.
Elizabeth B. Letchworth is a retired, elected United
States Senate Secretary for the Majority and Minority. Currently she is a
senior legislative adviser for Covington & Burling, LLC and is the founder
of GradeGov.com
