Pass it and let him say no on Aug 2nd.
http://blogs.ajc.com/jamie-dupree-washington-insider/2011/07/25/debt-limit-spin-wars/
Debt Limit Spin Wars
12:25 pm July 25, 2011, by Jamie Dupree
Democrats are pushing back furiously against stories being circulated by Republicans on Capitol Hill that there was a bipartisan House-Senate deal for a short-term debt limit increase on Sunday which was later rejected by the White House.
Republicans claimed this morning that a deal had been struck between Speaker Boehner, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but that President Obama refused to accept it.
But Reid’s spokesman Adam Jentleson sternly denied there was any such agreement, and that the Senate Majority Leader never took any short-term debt extension to the White House for review by the President.
That certainly meshed with Reid’s statement from Sunday night, in which he rejected Republican plans for a smaller increase in the debt limit as unacceptable.
“Speaker Boehner’s plan, no matter how he tries to dress it up, is simply a short-term plan,” Reid messaged, adding, “it is a non-starter in the Senate.”
But Republicans on both sides of the Capitol said there had been work on a bipartisan deal going on between the Reid and McConnell staffs over the weekend, though the evidence was lacking that an actual deal had been reached.
“The Speaker, Sen. Reid and Sen. McConnell all agreed on the general framework of a two-part plan,” a senior Republican aide on Capitol Hill told me on Monday.
Another senior Republican aide on the House side of the Capitol confirmed that story as well.
The supposed agreement though sounded much like what Republicans have been trying to sell in recent days - a short term extension of the debt limit of about $1 trillion into next year, and then the creation of a special committee to wring out even more budget savings later.
“Sen. Reid took the bipartisan plan to the White House and the President said no,” the GOP aide said.
But on Monday morning, Reid’s office angrily denied that story line from the Republican side, and made clear in no uncertain terms that it was not true.
“Any reports that Senator Reid or his staff signed off on or agreed to a Republican plan yesterday are unequivocally and completely false,” said Reid’s spokesman Jentleson.
“Republicans are pushing a false account of a White House meeting they were not involved in. Our office never signed off on any proposal with Republicans. Senator Reid did update President Obama on the status of the staff talks that had been occurring throughout the weekend. But in the meeting, Senator Reid made it clear that none of the proposals produced by the talks satisfied his bottom line of avoiding a short-term increase of the debt ceiling. Likewise, President Obama and Leader Pelosi agreed that the talks had not produced anything that met our unified bottom line of avoiding a short-term deal.
“Yesterday’s talks broke down because Republicans will not move off their insistence on a short-term proposal, which will risk many of the same dire economic consequences for American families that would be triggered by default itself.”
Meanwhile, the White House stepped up its own attacks on Republicans, charging that GOP leaders were the ones walking away from deals on the debt limit.
“Speaker walked away twice from fair deals backed by the public,” said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney in a late morning Tweet.
“THAT’S indefensible,” Carney wrote, as he accused House Republicans of risks to the “economy by refusing to compromise.”