The
extremely ugly and counter-productive all-cuts, no-revenue, Democrats-take-the-blame for the deficit plan the respective Senate leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell have cooked up appears to have
attracted a third negotiator: the White House.
The White House has joined secretive talks between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to craft an escape plan should lamwakers fail to reach a deal for raising the debt ceiling.[...]
The involvement of the White House signals that the fall-back plan might be gaining new steam as the talks on a bigger deficit bargain turn into a partisan blame game. House conservatives have said they do not support the McConnell plan.
Reid said his work with McConnell "is not the only plan" available, but Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said, given the legislative calendar, an alternative such as the McConnell-Reid proposal will be necessary if another deal cannot be struck this week.[...]
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday said the fallback plan should be on the table, even as he said that he does not know if it could pass the House.
By all reports, the plan would combine the relatively clean debt ceiling vote proposal McConnell originally forwarded and be "sweetened" with spending cuts, possibly those already identified in the Biden talks, which might include the chained CPI COLA cuts to Social Security and the new blended rate formula for cutting state Medicaid support. It tacks on a new deficit commission comprised of members of Congress.
Steve Benen writes that the "no revenue" part of the idea, which would make it unacceptable to most Democrats, could be blunted.
And what about Dems, who aren’t likely to approve of a Plan B that includes $1.5 trillion in cuts but nothing in the way of new revenue? Rumor has it the plan will include a few sweeteners for the left, including a possible extension of unemployment benefits, while shielding entitlements from the list of cuts.
It’s easy to imagine Plan B gathering some momentum very quickly today. Indeed, if there’s a solid bipartisan Senate majority on board with its details, the White House signals its grudging support, and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) gives it his seal of approval (as appears likely), the plan would start to look like the life-preserver Washington has been waiting for.
It looks like that could be precisely what's happening: Boehner has given a grudging okay, and the White House is engaged. Democrats have had to swallow a crappy plan before with the unemployment benefits sweetener added; that's how the big tax deal capitulation of last December moved forward. Now they could be facing another big capitulation on taxes, a tiny tax plan compared to last December, and it looks like they could be being set up to capitulate again.