(h/t Heather for video)
I'm working on fumes right now, but President Obama just announced that Boehner, McConnell and Reid have reached an agreement on the debt ceiling bill so now it's off to Congress to see if it will get passed.
President Obama discussed the framework in a public statement at the White House Sunday evening, and urged members of both parties to support the plan. He also criticized Congress for touching off this crisis, and for being unable to arrive at a single grand bargain to improve the country's fiscal situation (with spending cuts and tax increases) and raise the debt limit as well.
"Is this the deal I would have preferred? No," Obama said. "But this compromise does make a serious down payment on the deficit reduction we need."
The announcement came just as House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) hosted a conference call with his own, unruly caucus, to sell them on the same plan. Passing this bill will be a heavier lift in that caucus, where scores of Democrats and Republicans are expected to defect.
Luke Russert has been all over MSNBC talking about Boehner's conference call and saying it was like a pep-rally, you know..he had to go all Vince Lombardi on his members to try and persuade them to vote for this deal. VICTORY!
The final hurdle was Speaker Boehner, who fought to lower the ratio on the trigger, away from a 50-50 split on the trigger we talked about earlier. As it turns out, Boehner lost that fight, and the White House told him there would be movement on this point, and the Speaker conceded the point. (He’d already won on so many other points, this was a minor setback.)
And here (pdf), by the way, is the presentation Boehner made available to his caucus after endorsing the agreement. The Speaker clearly doesn’t love the plan, but in a hilarious twist, Boehner said failing to pass it would lead to a “job-killing default.” That would be the same default Boehner has been willing to pursue for the last several months.
This plan still unfortunately kicks the can down to another frakkin' Cat Food Committee in November where we'll be debating the same stuff all over again.
I'm hearing that the cuts tied to the trigger will be 50-50 on defense and non-defense spending and that the Big Three safety Net programs won't have benefits cut. We'll find out more hard info tomorrow.
On FOX, Baier and Rosen were discussing the Balanced Budget amendment that will be voted down immediately as Rosen described it as a poison pill in the whole debt ceiling debate. Huckabee was saying what a wonderful idea it would be to alter the Constitution. Sorry, Huck, that sucks.
I'm too burnt to write much more on this tonight myself. Nobody is happy with this deal, even the Tea Party cult because many of them want the US to default and the world markets to unravel.
The NY Times has more info on the triggers and reactions from Senators and leaders from both parties.
