UPDATE
Just after noon today, House speaker John Boehner announced that he will bring a clean debt ceiling bill to the floor later this afternoon or evening. According to Breitbart’s article, HERE:
President Obama and congressional Democrats had said they were opposed to even discussing spending cuts in the context of the debt ceiling. But Republicans couldn’t even come together with their own plan.
“It’s a recognition that we don’t have 218 votes. When you don’t have 218 votes, you have nothing,” Boehner said in a press conference.
House leadership began the effort offering to tack on relatively-modest GOP priorities like the Keystone pipeline on the debt ceiling increase. That wasn’t enough for the right, who wanted to go big or go home. “There’s only votes for something bold,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, a former chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, “I was willing to do something bold.”
In a related development, the Washington Times is reporting, HERE, that:
The Senate Conservatives Fund says that it is time for House Speaker John Boehner to go and they will keep track of the GOP lawmakers that support their effort to oust him from his leadership post.
The group, which is targeting several incumbent Republicans in primary races this year, said Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, has sold out small government principles on too many occasions and the last straw came this week when House GOP leaders signaled they were going to support a bill to increase the nation’s borrowing limit without attaching any strings to reduce spending.
“There’s only one solution. John Boehner must be replaced as Speaker of the House,” said Matt Hoskins, group’s executive director.
“Conservatives helped Republicans win a majority in the House of Representatives, which made it possible for John Boehner to become speaker. Unfortunately, he has chosen to ignore us and help President Obama enact his liberal agenda.”
About three weeks ago, the Obama administration’s Treasury Secretary Jack Lew advised Congressional leaders that the debt limit would need to be increased sooner than was earlier expected, stipulating late February as the latest point to which the legislation could be safely postponed. Soon thereafter House speaker John Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel said that a “clean” debt limit increase simply would not pass the House.
From Secretary Lew’s letter, sent to John Boehner and other Congressional leaders:
The length of time that the extraordinary measures can extend the nation’s borrowing authority is significantly shorter than it was in 2011 and 2013. This is in large part because the government experiences large net cash outflows in the month of February, due to tax refunds. For example, in 2013, the government experienced net cash outflows of approximately 230 billion in the month of February, as compared to average net outflows of 45 billion in the other months of the year. Moreover, this year the payment of tax refunds will be particularly concentrated in the weeks after February 7th due to the delayed start of the tax filing season, which was caused by the government shutdown.
In addition, the amount of borrowing capacity that can be provided by the extraordinary measures is significantly more limited than in 2011 and 2013. In February, we estimate that they could free up only about 200 billion, compared to 330 billion in 2013. The difference results largely because some of the extraordinary measures are only available at certain times of the year. For example, Treasury’s statutory authority to suspend the reinvestment of Treasury securities held by certain federal trust funds is of particular value when a large amount of securities mature in June of each year; the value of that suspension authority is much less in February. The significantly smaller amount of headroom that can be freed up now will quickly be exhausted by the large obligations of the government that occur in the month of February.
I think we can expect more developments on this situation soon.