Follow every last twist and turn in the default crisis at TPM LiveWire.
There’s been a delicate dance all week between Speaker Boehner and Leader Reid over whose debt bill would get voted on first in their respective chambers. The dance was almost entirely driven by political factors. Basically, who would look best in the public eye and who would be in the strongest position to negotiate a final deal.
But with the House’s failure to even take up the Boehner plan yesterday, that delicate dance is over because Reid is bumping up against Senate procedural deadlines. If he doesn’t move today, he likely can’t get his bill to a final vote before August 2, when Treasury runs of money.
Sounds like Harry Reid is going to push forward with his debt bill today in the Senate regardless of what happens in the House. “The last train is leaving the station,” Reid just said on the Senate floor.
A brief excerpt of Reid’s floor speech, as prepared for delivery: Read More
Revised government data released this morning shows the recession was significantly worse than previously thought. Instead of shrinking by 2.5 percent in 2009, the economy actually shrank by 3.5 percent.
Two points to remember about that: Read More
First quarter GDP revised downward to a 0.4 percent growth rate. Second quarter GDP grew at a lower-than-expected 1.3 percent.
Let’s go ahead and suck some more demand out of the economy by cutting government spending. But first, it’d be a good idea to roil the credit markets by flirting with government default.
Anything we’re leaving out of this recipe for disaster?
Our Susan Crabtree reports in from the late night Rules Committee meeting …
The House Rules Committee met at 11 p.m. Thursday and voted on a party-line 8 to 4 vote for allowing GOP leaders to revise and vote on the Budget Control Act without going back to the Rules Committee anytime through Aug. 2, but not before Democrats angrily accused Republicans of pulling the vote because some of their members had issues with $17 billion in the bill for Pell grants. Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) said only “there are a number of issues” GOP hold-out members have with the bill.
More running updates in our auto-updating TPMLivewire.
House Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) just announced there will be no vote tonight on the Boehner debt bill.
A remarkable turn of events. Simply no reason for Boehner to bring up his own bill if it was doomed to fail, and clearly it was.
Despite a lot of confident talk from Boehner and his leadership team, it appears they never had the votes. Read More