Implicit in last night’s deal-making on the fiscal cliff was a certain level of confidence among Senate Republicans that they wouldn’t be left hung out to dry by their House counterparts. It’s not entirely clear whether that confidence was based on private assurances from the House GOP leadership, the notion that overwhelming passage in the Senate would force the House GOP’s hand, or the sense that the reality of going off the cliff would serve to focus the collective mind after Dec. 31 in a way that mere hypotheticals had not just a few days ago. Whatever the case, today we should get a much better idea of whether that confidence was misplaced.
House Democrats are caucusing now in the Capitol, with Vice President Joe Biden, in a meeting that began at 12:15 p.m. ET. House Republicans will meet separately at 1 p.m. ET (then meet again later today, according to one report). No vote has been scheduled yet in the House, and there are indications that no decision has been made on whether a vote will happen today at all. Meanwhile, some conservative Members are expressing outrage over the deal and vowing to oppose it.
All of which suggests there is more work for Speaker Boehner and his whip operation to do
before being able to bring the deal to the floor.
It’s been hard to find a single sign today that the fiscal cliff deal is going to garner support from a majority of House Republicans — and there are abundant signs pointing in the opposite direction. Similarly, there’s no evidence that Speaker Boehner is preparing to pass the bill with less than majority GOP support.
In short, things are not playing out today consistent with the notion that the White House, Senate and House had really reached a deal last night that each side could deliver on. And the gamble the White House and Senate may have made that they could pressure the House with a fait accompli of a deal is looking like a bust.
I don’t guess this should be a surprise. The underlying politics have changed very little since the House GOP shot down Boehner’s own plan B. But it is mystifying why Senate Republicans thought this deal would fly — or why it would leave them less exposed politically even if it died in the House.
The latest from the Hill is talk of the House amending the bill — i.e., adding spending cuts — and shipping it back to the Senate. A game of legislative hot potato. But that doesn’t seem likely to go anywhere. So we’re stuck. Again. No resolution in sight.
Why did a fiscal cliff deal originate with Senate Republicans in the first place? you might ask. Especially since the roadblock to a deal has been the House GOP all along.
Here’s an important part of the answer: Boehner himself kicked the problem over to the Senate, as Brian Beutler reminds us here.
Here’s the statement Boehner released on Dec. 26: Read More
Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH): “The plan is to develop a plan that will get 218 votes out of this conference, and that’s a very tricky thing as we’ve seen over the last two years.”
From TPM Reader TA …
One thing I’ve learned about during the fiscal cliff process since the election is the so-called “Hastert rule,” which forbids a GOP Speaker of the House from being any legislation to the floor that doesn’t have the support of a majority of the GOP caucus.
Am I mistaken, or does this not, in effect, create the same super-majority requirement in the House that now exists in the Senate as a result of filibuster abuse?
I know about both, of course. But I hadn’t connected the two in this way before. Yet they do both have the same net effect under the present circumstances. Giving a subset of a single party an effective veto on government action on any sort.
At a second conference meeting Tuesday afternoon House GOP leaders attempted to talk their members off a ledge by offering them a stark choice: First, the House could amend the Senate’s fiscal cliff bill, tack on more than $300 billion domestic spending cuts, and toss it back into Harry Reid’s lap. That would be on the condition that 218 Republicans committed to voting for the amended bill.
Beneath that level of support, leaders said, they’d put the Senate bill on the floor for a clean up or down vote and let fate dictate the outcome. But, before asking members to commit in either direction, leaders warned the conference that amending and passing the Senate bill would be tantamount to killing it. The subtext was clear — House Republicans would take the blame for the ensuing economic fallout.
The appeal seems to have worked. Read More
After all that, it appears — as clearly as anything can appear with this House majority — that the Senate-passed fiscal cliff deal will get a straight up or down vote in the House this evening.
No amendments to the deal. Just a straight vote.
Late Update: The final vote is expected between 11 and 11:30 p.m. ET.
Later Update: House business moving more quickly. Latest word is a final vote between 10:30 and 10:45 p.m. ET.