http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/democrats-set-drop-dead-date-for-debt-ceiling-backup-plan.php?ref=fpb<snip>
President Obama's quest to reach a historic budget agreement with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) fell into deep doubt Thursday, after a noisy rebellion by Senate Democrats over reports that Obama might hand Republicans the farm on discretionary and entitlement spending, with few or no guarantees that the GOP will accept any new tax revenues.
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If the initial leak was meant to serve as a trial balloon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) shot it out of the sky the same day, after a contentious meeting with White House budget director Jack Lew. A Senate leadership aide told me that Reid will set the wheels in motion to pass a backup plan no later than Sunday unless a deal that can pass both chambers is agreed to before then. And the administration, clearly in damage control mode, summoned Democratic leaders up Pennsylvania Ave late in the day to clear the air, nurse wounds, and lay out a possible framework for a grand bargain to the skeptical crowd.
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The White House, by contrast, is pushing hard for a compromise. And Democrats are worried that in his zeal to accomplish something historic, Obama will agree to a debt plan that omits, or complicates, a key Democratic demand: new, concrete sources of tax revenue.
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Democrats favored one proposal: if Congress failed to pass tax reform by date-certain, then the top-bracket Bush tax cuts would expire -- a hefty stick that would encourage Republicans to cut a deal. Boehner never agreed to that -- and now that the grand bargain has been revived, Democrats are worried that Obama has abandoned that trigger, and perhaps his insistence on a trigger of any kind.
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