Senate Rejects House Debt Reduction Plan

By Chuck Sudo in News on Jul 30, 2011 3:00PM

And they're back to Square One in Washington today as the Senate last night AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais">rejected the debt reduction plan passed by the House of Representatives. Boehner worked throughout the day to rally GOP support for the bill, inching it further to the right to appeal to the Tea Party congressmen who opposed it, finally bringing many on board when language was included in the bill to call for a balanced budget amendment.

The Boehner bill passed with no Democratic support and 22 GOP "no" votes, including Illinois Congressmen Tim Johnson and Joe Walsh. Boehner afterward said, "I have stuck my neck out a mile" to get this bill passed. The obstinance of freshmen GOP congressmen in opposing Boehner exposed the House speaker as a neutered leader.

The gravity of the situation was furthered by President Obama's call yesterday for Americans to implore their representatives to work together to craft a debt reduction plan, which flooded the congressional switchboard, twitter feeds and email inboxes. With the Senate's rejecting of the Boehner plan, it's now up to Senate Democrats to try and find a common ground between the two houses before the Tuesday deadline to raise the debt ceiling. Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet called this impasse the worst congressional deadlock she's seen in 20 years covering Capitol Hill.

One solution that is off the table to solve this mess is President Obama invoking the 14th Amendment to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. (No need to exacerbate a constitutional crisis with another one.) Although that hasn't stopped some pundits and Presidential hopefuls from saying it's still a possibility. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney emphatically shut that door yesterday.