TPM's Brian Beutler has a couple of good stories detailing the process for Congressional votes this weekend on the debt ceiling, and the outlook from here for Congressional action happening before the debt ceiling deadline is met, particularly considering the
Senate process for getting a final vote on a bill.
Senate rules require Reid to allow one full day, and one hour, before he can hold the first test vote on the plan—a cloture vote on the motion to proceed. He would thus call the Senate into session at 12:01 a.m. Sunday morning, and hold the vote at 1 a.m. If he gets 60 votes for the plan, he has to wait 30 hours before he can hold the next test vote—to end debate on the bill. That 60-threshold vote would happen at about 7 a.m. Monday. If that works, he has to wait another 30 hours, before finally passing his bill in an up-or-down vote Tuesday at about 1 p.m.
Then it would be in the House's hands, where the question is: Can the extremely weakened Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) muster enough GOP votes for Reid's plan to pass it on a bipartisan basis? They'd have until just after midnight on Wednesday, when Treasury believes they'll run out of borrowing authority.
This could all happen a little faster than that, depending on whether Boehner immediately sends the bill over and whether Reid holds an immediate vote to table the Boehner amendment, or "use it as a privileged vehicle to avoid the first test vote on the motion to proceed. That would take 30 hours off the clock." So then the question becomes whether there are enough Republicans willing to work with Reid to avoid forcing him to jump through procedural hoops that will take the end vote down to the very brink.
Beutler reports
Right now, Democrats are looking to about 11 gettable GOP votes: Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Susan Collins (R-ME), Bob Corker (R-TN), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Scott Brown (R-MA), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Mike Crapo (R-ID), and Tom Coburn (R-OK). The last three were the Republican members of the Gang of Six deficit reduction group.
Right now, the smart money, according to both Republican and Democratic aides, is on finding a trigger—or more accurately a penalty—to build into Harry Reid's plan to assure it leads to more deficit reduction in the future.
As currently devised, Reid's creates an ad hoc Congressional Committee tasked with authoring legislation to reduce the deficit by trillions of dollars—likely through a combination of entitlement and tax reforms. It also raises the debt limit by over $2 trillion. Republicans won't accept the latter unless there's some assurance that the committee reports a bill, and Congress passes the bill. More accurately, they won't accept it unless future entitlement cuts are guaranteed to happen.
Of course, with the House teabaggers' bill a dead letter, they won't support anything the Senate comes up with, so the Senate is going to have to come up with something that Democrats will support. Carved-in-stone future cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid aren't likely to be fit that bill.
So maybe that two $1 trillion platinum coins isn't such a wacky idea, after all.