GOP official: House to vote to lift debt limit

Jan 18, 1:48 PM EST — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-controlled House will vote next week to per­mit the gov­ern­ment to bor­row more money to meet its oblig­a­tions, a move aimed at head­ing off a market-rattling con­fronta­tion with Pres­i­dent Barack Obama over the so-called debt limit.

Full details aren’t set­tled yet, but the mea­sure would give the gov­ern­ment about three more months of bor­row­ing author­ity beyond a dead­line expected to hit as early as mid-February, No. 2 House Repub­li­can Eric Can­tor of Vir­ginia said Friday.

The leg­is­la­tion wouldn’t require imme­di­ate spend­ing cuts as ear­lier promised by GOP lead­ers like Speaker John Boehner of Ohio. Instead, it’s aimed at forc­ing the Democratic-controlled Sen­ate to join the House in debat­ing the fed­eral bud­get. It would try to do so by con­di­tion­ing pay for mem­bers of Con­gress on pass­ing a con­gres­sional bud­get measure.

“We are going to pur­sue strate­gies that will oblig­ate the Sen­ate to finally join the House in con­fronting the government’s spend­ing prob­lem,” Boehner told GOP law­mak­ers at a retreat in Williamburg, Va. “The prin­ci­ple is sim­ple: ‘no bud­get, no pay.’”

The Sen­ate hasn’t passed a bud­get since 2009, which has drawn lots of crit­i­cism from Repub­li­cans but pro­tected Democ­rats con­trol­ling the cham­ber from polit­i­cally dif­fi­cult votes.

Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid wel­comed the House GOP move.

“It is reas­sur­ing to see Repub­li­cans begin­ning to back off their threat to hold our econ­omy hostage,” said Reid spokesman Adam Jentle­son. “If the House can pass a clean debt-ceiling increase to avoid default and allow the United States to meet its exist­ing oblig­a­tions, we will be happy to con­sider it.”

GOP lead­ers have been grap­pling with how to gain lever­age in their bat­tles with Obama over the bud­get. Boehner suc­cess­fully won about $2 tril­lion in spend­ing cuts as a con­di­tion of increas­ing the government’s bor­row­ing cap in 2011.

Obama, how­ever, was dealt a stronger hand by his re-election in Novem­ber and suc­cess­fully pressed through a 10-year, $600 bil­lion increase on upper-bracket tax pay­ers ear­lier this month.

Other choke points remain, includ­ing sharp across-the-board spend­ing cuts that would start to strike the Pen­ta­gon and domes­tic pro­grams alike on March 1 and the pos­si­bil­ity of a par­tial gov­ern­ment shut­down with the expi­ra­tion of a tem­po­rary bud­get mea­sure on March 27.

Fail­ing to meet those dead­lines would have far less seri­ous con­se­quences than default­ing on U.S. oblig­a­tions like pay­ments to bond­hold­ers, Social Secu­rity recip­i­ents and myr­iad other com­mit­ments when the gov­ern­ment con­fronts a cash cri­sis and can no longer bor­row to make pay­ments. That could cause a melt­down in finan­cial mar­kets and would inflame vot­ers already dis­gusted with Congress.

Boehner has pre­vi­ously invoked a promise that any increase in the government’s bor­row­ing cap would be matched, dol­lar for dol­lar, by spend­ing cuts or “reforms” that could include curbs on the long-term growth in retire­ment pro­grams such as Medicare. Friday’s announce­ment did not repeat that spe­cific promise.

“Before there is any long-term debt limit increase, a bud­get should be passed that cuts spend­ing,” Boehner said. “The Democratic-controlled Sen­ate has failed to pass a bud­get for four years. That is a shame­ful run that needs to end, this year.”

The mea­sure picked up sup­port from key GOP con­ser­v­a­tives, includ­ing the cur­rent and for­mer chair­men of the Repub­li­can Study Com­mit­tee, a pow­er­ful group inside the House GOP.

“In order to allow time for the Sen­ate to act, next week’s bill will extend the debt limit for three months,” the Study Com­mit­tee said Fri­day in a state­ment. “This is a nec­es­sary first step as we work to halt the decline of Amer­ica and puts the focus where it belongs: on the Sen­ate who has failed to do their jobs to pass a bud­get for more than three years.” The state­ment was issued by RSC Chair­man Steve Scalise, R-La., and for­mer chair­men, Jim Jor­dan, R-Ohio, Tom Price, R-Ga., and Jeb Hen­sar­ling, R-Texas.

Obama’s bud­get is due early next month but is expected to be released sev­eral weeks later.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jan 18 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.