A Watched Pot July 31, 2011
Posted by Benjamin Wendell in Politics.trackback
May finally be showing sign of boiling. Sorry if all this debt ceiling talk is catatonically boring, but it’s hard for me, at least, to think about much else in the larger world. With the government and the markets hovering on the knife-edge of a true crisis, I’ve been doing that therapy trick of listing things for which I’m grateful. I’m grateful that Tiger Woods is coming back to golf and I’m grateful that there’s going to be an NFL season and a Superbowl in Indy. I’m grateful that Peyton Manning turned out to be as much of a decent guy as most of us thought he was and that he’ll almost certainly play his whole career for the Colts, just as another gentleman, Reggie Miller, did for the Pacers. But I’d be even more grateful if my pension fund wasn’t worth half as much on Wednesday as it was on Tuesday. Selfish? Sure, but I figure I’m entitled…along with every other American who’s worked hard to provide for themselves and their families. So maybe my blogmate will turn out again to be a more prescient prognosticator than yours truly:
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@ samsteinhp : breaking: Dem leaders are all in pelosi’s office, i’m told. and everyone has signed off on deal. waiting on Boehner. |
A Democratic source on Capital Hill tells The Huffington Post that the Congressional Progressive Caucus will hold an “emergency meeting” on Monday to discuss the final deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.
The meeting will take place at 2:00 p.m. and there will be “a formal vote on the Caucus’ position to the deal.” Members have been urged to attend.
Earlier on Sunday, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), a co-chair of the caucus, put out a statement harshly opposing the reported deal.
“This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it,” the statement read. “Progressives have been organizing for months to oppose any scheme that cuts Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, and it now seems clear that even these bedrock pillars of the American success story are on the chopping block. Even if this deal were not as bad as it is, this would be enough for me to fight against its passage.”
How progressive lawmakers come down in the final vote may be the key to its passage. There are 76 members of the CPC, including one senator (Bernie Sanders). Should House Speaker John Boehner bleed a good chunk of votes from his party — a perfectly conceivable outcome — he will be forced to rely heavily on Democratic votes.
Progressives have swallowed their complaints about major pieces of legislation before, including health care reform and the extension of the Bush tax cuts, but they do hold some leverage going into Monday or Tuesday’s debt ceiling vote in the House.
They’re getting close. It may be my fellow lefties who in the end hold the final votes, which may mean they’ll have to take one for the good of the country or it may mean that they’ll have enough bargaining power to save Medicare and Social Security and still get a deal signed.
I’ll keep watching the pot.
BW
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