Senate On Verge Of Deal To End Shutdown, Avoid Default

It looks as if Senate leadership, following days of scrambling to put together a deal to reopen government and avert a default on the US debt, has the makings of an agreement.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky could seal an agreement on Tuesday, just two days before the Treasury Department says it will run out of borrowing capacity.

The emerging pact would reopen the government through Jan. 15 and permit the Treasury to borrow normally until early to mid-February, easing dual crises that have sapped confidence in the economy and taken a sledgehammer to the GOP’s poll numbers.

“The general framework is there” between Reid and McConnell, said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. He said conversations with the House were continuing and he thought it would be midday Tuesday at the earliest before a plan was finalized.

Sen. Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat who was part of the bipartisan group known as the Gang of 12 which labored over the weekend to end the stalemate, said Tuesday he was “pretty confident” the Senate leadership and the White House would announce an agreement some time later in the day.

Speaking of the House, Pryor told CNN that “some Republicans are, quite honestly, they’re acting childish about this. They almost want a shutdown. They almost want to see us break the debt ceiling.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., also a part of the Gang of 12, told “CBS This Morning” she believes an agreement is near that “doesn’t contain a lot of the partisan pills” that sank earlier proposals. She said it’s urgent that national leaders find solutions to vexing issues so that the country doesn’t “lurch from one financial crisis to another.”

Of course, the big question remains whether extremists in the House of Representatives will scupper the whole thing:

[W]hile both Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, praised the progress that was made in the Senate, it was already clear that the most conservative members of the House were not going to go along quietly with a plan that does not accomplish their goal from the outset of this two-week-old crisis: dismantling the president’s health care law.

“We’ve got a name for it in the House: it’s called the Senate surrender caucus,” said Representative Tim Huelskamp, Republican of Kansas. “Anybody who would vote for that in the House as Republican would virtually guarantee a primary challenger.”

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.