The House finally passed a debt-ceiling lifter this afternoon, only to see it shot down in the Senate this evening. The "Boehner Bill" squeaked through 218-210, with no Democratic crossovers, but was tabled 59-41 in the Senate; that effectively kills the bill, but not completely, since the Senate's counter-offer will likely be offered as an amendment to the House bill in order to keep the constitutional mandate that money bills start in the House. Tabling the bill allows it to be used as a host for the Democratic symbiote.
I'm not sure what to make of the six Republicans voting for tabling the bill; the "RINO Sisters" voting against tabling, but Tea Partiers Paul and Lee voted for tabling. There might be a bit of both ends against the middle there.
What we have now is some good old-fashion haggling. With the exception of having an insistance on voting out a balanced budget amendment, the main differences between the two plans is the amount of smoke and mirrors on the cuts; the Reid plan is more back-loaded and has a few more questionable gizmos.
The middle ground seems to be for the consevatives to give on the BBA, for the Democrats to accept more front-loaded cuts and call it good. Conservatives won't like it, but the path forward in early August seems more center-left than center-right, since we've maxed out at where a center-right coaltion can get.
By the way; the world doesn't end on August 3 if nothing is done. As I noted in the last post, Uncle Sam has a few marketable securities of its own that it could sell in a pinch, not to mention some trust funds that could be raided. Grandma's SS check won't bounce, unless the administration really wants to chew the political scenery.
The 3-month T-bill has creeped up a tad today, up to a truly loan-sharky 0.09% from 0.06% when we looked in earlier in the week. That's my benchmark to see if the smart money is panicing; they aren't, at least not enough to loose sleep over.
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