INCHING AWAY FROM THE BUDGET BRINK?.... <...>
Did Boehner's remarks signal heightened tensions and the increased likelihood of a government shutdown next week? Oddly enough, no. In fact, the opposite may be true. As
Greg Sargent noted, Boehner's chest-thumping bravado may have been a "signal to conservatives that he's drawing a hard line in talks, partly because he knows that ultimately those talks will likely yield a deal that will be difficult to sell to them."
What kind of deal?
This kind of deal.
After weeks of arguing, Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill began negotiations Wednesday on a possible budget agreement that would slash federal spending by as much as $33 billion and avert a government shutdown.
"We're all working off the same number now," Vice President Biden told reporters after meeting with Senate Democratic leaders at the Capitol on Wednesday evening. "Obviously, there's a difference in the composition of that number -- what's included, what's not included. It's going to be a thorough negotiation."
If approved, the deal would be the largest single-year budget cut in U.S. history.
At this point, there is no compromise plan and a deal has not been reached. What policymakers have reportedly agreed to is a target -- Republicans wanted $61 billion in cuts; Democrats wanted $10 billion; so they'll agree to $33 billion. That's roughly what House GOP leaders
originally wanted when the process began, before rank-and-file Republicans defied their own party's leadership and demanded more.
The $33 billion in cuts would actually be $23 billion at this stage, since the last two temporary extensions already cut spending by about $10 billion. The challenge for policymakers at this point, then, is to identify the $23 billion that all parties can agree to.
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Updated to add this from Brian Beutler at TPM:
Cantor Gets Rogers'dI was in Cantor's weekly briefing yesterday when he got dressed down by Politico's David Rogers. And yes, it was a sight to behold. But for self-interested reasons, this is being passed around by Democrats and, well, Politico, as evidence that David Rogers is more keyed into what's going on behind the scenes in the budget fight than Eric Cantor.
Color me skeptical there. John Boehner might not brief Cantor as thoroughly as Harry Reid briefs Chuck Schumer (I don't know) but what I took from that exchange was that Cantor hid the ball, so he could more credibly move the center of gravity of budget negotiations to the right. If you're the number two Republican in the House and you admit that the Speaker is planning to cut a deal with Democrats, you can't easily undercut him in public and move the goalposts in your direction. But you can pretend you're not privy to those discussions and then play bad cop, by pushing for a more conservative outcome.
With that in mind, I think a more realistic take is that Cantor sees a falling out brewing between Boehner and House conservatives, and wants them to have a place to rest their loyalties in the aftermath. Maybe he's doing that to undermine Boehner. Maybe he's doing it to preserve some semblance of rank-and-file loyalty to leadership. Maybe a bit of both. But he's not just twiddling his thumbs ignorantly while the principals do all the real work.
Full Cantor-Rogers exchange below the fold.
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