Senate talks at temporary halt
Fast-paced Senate talks to reopen the government and avert a default came to a temporary halt Tuesday as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell waited to see whether House Republicans could pass their latest proposal.
According to senators and aides close to the talks, McConnell is waiting to see whether the House can pass its bill, which calls for more Obamacare changes than the proposal under consideration between the Senate GOP leader and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).Continue ReadingText Size
Boehner pushes House bill
If the House fails to adopt the plan Tuesday evening, then the McConnell-Reid negotiations would resume. House Speaker John Bohener’s failure would strengthen McConnell’s ability to sell the Senate proposal as the last, best possible deal for his party to end the fiscal crisis. But if the House passes its bill, then McConnell is in a far trickier position. He could demand passage of a House GOP bill Reid and the White House strongly oppose — or he could try to cut a bipartisan deal that many House conservatives are already balking at.
Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of Republican leadership, confirmed that the deliberations were on hold.
“My sense is that they have control of this issue on the House side for the next move, and the Senate will wait and see what the House sends.”
McConnell, who met with Reid Tuesday and later huddled with his leadership team, has said nothing publicly about the House plan introduced Tuesday morning until this point. GOP leaders abruptly canceled a Senate Republican meeting where they were supposed to be briefed on the emerging Reid-McConnell plan, showing how the House plan was complicating efforts in the Senate to reach a bipartisan deal.
Some of the details are still being hammered out in the Senate plan, but the length of the continuing resolution, or CR, to reopen the government and debt ceiling increase are both settled, sources said. A $986-billion CR would be extended until Jan. 15, punting the fight over additional sequestration spending cuts until the next time the two parties have to negotiate a continuing resolution. Also, the plan would raise the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling until Feb. 7. Both of those dates are in line with the House proposal.
But the similarities end there. The House legislation would delay Obamacare’s tax on medical devices for two years; cancel health-insurance subsidies for members of Congress, the president, vice president and the cabinet; and tighten income verification requirements for health care subsidies. It also would deny Treasury Department’s ability to use “extraordinary measures” to go beyond the Feb. 7 deadline if the debt ceiling isn’t raised to avoid a default.
In the emerging House-Senate plan, Treasury would still be given that “extraordinary measures” authority, which the White House is strongly pushing.
It’s not yet clear whether the final Senate deal would include any Obamacare-related provisions. McConnell is pushing for the income verification requirements to be included in a final plan. But Reid is seeking a plan to delay Obamacare’s so-called reinsurance tax, nicknamed the “belly-button tax,” a proposal the GOP opposes because they see it as a handout to unions.
Democratic sources said Tuesday either both of those Obamacare provisions will be in a final deal, or neither will be.
Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/senate-budget-default-debt-ceiling-government-shutdown-98333.html#ixzz2hp24QiFW
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