A second House proposal to raise the debt ceiling is killed in the Senate

  Last night John Boehner managed to pass a second bill to raise the debt ceiling, and like the first one, the Senate killed the bill by a vote of 59-41. This is what Jay Carney had to say after the news came out:

Now that yet another political exercise is behind us, with time dwindling, leaders need to start working together immediately to reach a compromise that avoids default and lays the basis for balanced deficit reduction

  The House proposal was just a “political exercise” which needed to be brushed aside so the real work could begin? With this behind us Jay Carney says time is running out and a compromise must be reached by the two sides working together immediately. Wouldn’t debate on the House bill have provided the best and quickest opportunity to “compromise” in a reconciliation process? The House has made two efforts and now the future of the debt ceiling debate is solely on Harry Reid and his proposal that nobody has actually seen.

  It is rumored that Harry Reid’s bill actually includes more spending cuts than the House bill, and like the House bill, it contains no tax increases. But we really don’t know yet, do we? And we also can guess that while the debt ceiling will be increased immediately, the spending cuts will be future cuts and most likely never will happen. This was the problem with the House bill and I would bet it is much the same in Harry Reid’s secret bill.

  Here is how I think this is going to play out: Harry Reid is going to delay a vote on his bill until it will be too late for the House to make changes to it. There will be no compromise bill between the House and the Senate. If the House kills the Senate bill, the Democrats will lay the blame at the feet of House Republicans even though the Senate refused twice to compromise on House bills when given the chance. The House will realize there is no choice and they will pass Harry Reid’s bill intact; of course this means that Harry Reid and the Democrats will take credit for “saving life on this planet as we know it” and as for being fiscally responsible, while at the same time trying to paint the House Republicans irrelevant.

  While Harry Reid and the Democrats will claim to have won this round–and while on the surface that would seem to be the case–the fact is that if Barack Obama and Harry Reid had their way there would have been tax increases in this bill. So while Harry Reid is now calling the Tea Party “extremists” the fact is the Tea Party can take credit for changing the argument and ensuring that no new “revenue streams” were included in this legislation.

  A small victory maybe, but still a victory of sorts even though it is disappointing. If we want to truly change Washington DC we must continue to send more of these patriots to Washington in 2012–mainly in the Senate–for when our numbers grow strong enough we will be able to truly begin to get our house in order.