Last night, the Senate put the kibosh on John Boehner's debt plan. Late, late tonight, the Senate will take its first vote on a compromise. From the Washington Post:
The Senate is driving toward a climactic and dramatic vote at 1 a.m. Sunday that could determine whether a bipartisan deal to raise the nation’s legal borrowing limit is possible or a government default is likely.According to The Hill, there's still no assurance that the Senate bill will pass, which means there's going to be more compromise:
What that deal might look was still deeply uncertain Friday, but talks were underway between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate about methods to circumvent some of the chamber’s most cumbersome procedures to allow the Senate to act more quickly if a compromise is reached.
According to a Senate Democratic aide, Reid also increased the total level of spending cuts from $2.2 trillion to $2.4 trillion, in part by using the January baseline — a budget maneuver House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) used on a previous version of his debt-limit plan. The January budget baseline does not count cuts Congress implemented in legislation passed this spring to avert a government shutdown.More compromise means giving even more away to the GOPers.
So far Reid has had trouble attracting Republicans to his bill. Centrist Republican Sen. Scott Brown (Mass.) said he would vote for it, but otherwise it has received scant bipartisan support.
We've got til midnight Tuesday night to avoid default. For most of that, it means we've got til midnight Tuesday to see how badly our 401ks tank.
