As Saturday wears on, mixed messages are emerging about how close Republicans and Democrats may be to a compromise on how — or indeed whether — to raise the debt ceiling.
On the one hand, Republican leaders began to signal that it’s time to make a deal.
Meanwhile, the White House is once again playing a part in the process. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated he had engaged in a discussion with President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden.
However, Senate Majority Reader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were also engaged with the White House. They were summoned for urgent talks. When Reid returned to the Capitol he struck a downbeat note.
“The question is, are we closer to an agreement,” Reid said upon returning. “The answer is ‘no.'”
Meanwhile, a group of around 35 moderate House Republicans met with Speaker John Boehner — votes he’ll need to tack on to Democratic support in order to pass a deal around the compromise-phobic tea partiers in his caucus.
Reid signaled his willingness to alter his bill to gain Republican votes in a press conference he held Saturday afternoon.
Reid and House Pelosi then headed over to the White House, where they had been summoned to talk debt ceiling with Obama.
After that, Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell held a joint presser of their own that was heavy on allaying fears that default was coming.
“Our country is not going to default for the first time in history,” McConnell said. “That is not going to happen. We now have, I think, a level of seriousness with the right people at the table.”
“We’re going to get a result,” McConnell added.
But after the White House meeting, Reid took to floor to basically say that McConnell was seeing things that just aren’t there.
“Republican leaders still refuse to negotiate in good faith,” Reid said. “Revenues off the calendar — no way we can talk about revenues. Entitlements? Oh, they’re after entitlements…the Speaker and Republican leader should know that merely saying you have an agreement in front of a few television cameras doesn’t make it so.”
But Reid said “there are meaningful talks going on” between some Republicans and Democrats in the Senate. Reid needs three votes to go his way to pass his debt ceiling plan, which 43 Republicans said earlier today that they can’t support. Four Republicans declined to sign on to that point of view.
But McConnell, speaking after Reid on the floor, insisted that he’s still talking to the White House, despite Reid’s claim that the process has not “moved forward.”
“I’m more optimistic than my friend the Majority Leader,” McConnell said.
McConnell said that he’d also spoken to the White House Saturday, after he called for Obama to get reengaged with negotiations on the Senate floor this morning.
Outside Boehner’s meeting with the moderates, there was talk of compromise too.
“I certainly, I would like a big, bold, bipartisan plan,” Rep. Robert Dold (R-IL) told reporters. “I think that’s what the country needs.”
Dold said that Boehner “didn’t go into any specifics” in the meeting with moderates, but said, “I think the Speaker is optimistic.”
“Right now its up to the President and the Senate,” he said.
This post has been updated.
