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Wrapped inside House GOP leaders' proposal to extend the debt ceiling was a subtle concession that the days of debt limit extortion were over.

But on Tuesday morning, they abandoned even that. A Republican source in the room during a meeting confirmed to TPM that "we will be bringing up a 'clean' debt limit bill tomorrow. [Speaker John] Boehner made clear the GOP would provide the requisite number of Republican votes for the measure but that Democrats will be expected to carry the vote."

The proposal that surfaced Monday evening, only to be ditched by Tuesday morning, was as bipartisan as it comes: the plan reversed recently enacted cuts to military retirement benefits, which both parties overwhelmingly support. It's paid for by extending the mandatory sequestration cuts to Medicare providers for an extra year, which Democrats have also supported.

It became clear Tuesday morning what many suspected all along: House Republicans don't have nearly enough votes to pass their debt ceiling bill on their own, and the debt limit bill will pass with Democratic support. Reps. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Mo Brooks (R-AL) admitted as much to reporters in the Capitol after a special conference meeting on Monday evening. Many hard-right members don't want to vote for any borrowing limit hike.

"Doing it on the debt ceiling is just playing games with our military retirees," said a House Democratic leadership aide on Monday.

So the debate is all procedural and cosmetic. Both parties' leaders insist that default is not an option. Republicans wanted to package the two in order to save some face and claim they "got" something for raising the debt limit. Democrats wanted to do them separately in order to adhere to their insistence on "clean" debt limit hikes -- no strings attached, no threats to default, no hostage-taking of the economy by the party out of power. It's now clear that Democrats won that debate.

The military cost-of-living adjustments in the Ryan-Murray budget deal could be undone at a later date. A standalone bill to do just that moved forward in the Senate by a vote of 94-0 on Monday. The only question is whether that'll happen in conjunction with -- or independently from -- raising the country's borrowing authority. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/gop-plan-end-debt-limit-extortion

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Tea Party Group Pushes To Unseat Boehner After Debt Ceiling Surrender

The outside tea party-aligned group Senate Conservatives Fund is calling for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to be replaced in response to House Republican leadership's decision to push a clean debt ceiling hike.

The powerful outside group's call came in an email to supporters on Tuesday, shortly after House Republicans announced that they would give up on previous demands for a debt ceiling extension and instead support a clean hike.

"Unless we install a new leader who will actually go on offense, Democrats will never fear us and we will never have any leverage," Senate Conservatives Fund Executive Director Matt Hoskins wrote in an email. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/senate-conservatives-fund-replac
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On Monday night, Mr. Boehner laid out a plan to link the debt ceiling increase to legislation that would have reversed a cut to veteran retirement benefits. But conservative Republicans opposed the plan.

Mr. Boehner explained the decision to go forward with a “clean” debt ceiling bill as a reflection of the political reality that he simply did not have enough Republican votes to pass anything more ambitious. Many of the conference’s most conservative members refused to rally behind any debt ceiling increase that fell short of an audacious wish list of Republican policy proposals.

“I think in the end, there weren’t the votes for something modest,” said Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio.

“It’s the fact that we don’t have 218 votes,” he said after meeting with House Republicans, “and when you don’t have 218 votes, you have nothing.”

He added that he expected almost all of the House Democrats to vote to pass the bill, though he said he would still need to muster about 18 Republican votes to get the legislation over the finish line.

At a breakfast with reporters on Tuesday, Gene B. Sperling, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said the president did support bipartisan efforts to reverse a trim of 1 percentage point to cost-of-living increases for working-age veterans — at least for those already receiving such benefits. That seems to indicate that he would have signed a debt ceiling increase with that provision. More at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/us/politics/boehner-to-bring-debt-ce
iling-to-vote-without-policy-attachments.html?_r=2

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A divided U.S. House voted Tuesday to let the government borrow enough money to pay its bills for the next year, sending the measure to the Senate in an effort by Republican leaders to avoid another politically damaging legislative impasse over spending.

In the Senate, GOP leaders urged against a filibuster of a clean debt-ceiling bill by their colleagues.

By refraining from a filibuster, which would require 60 votes to overcome, the Senate's 45 Republicans can oppose the increase in the borrowing limit without getting accused of obstructing the 55-member Democratic caucus from passing it.

However, GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a leader of the conservative tea party wing in Congress, said Tuesday he would filibuster the measure to force a 60-vote threshold.

Senate leaders had wanted to vote on the debt ceiling plan no later than Wednesday, before the arrival of the storm. It was unclear if Cruz's threatened filibuster would prevent an immediate vote from taking place.

If Congress doesn't pass a debt ceiling measure Wednesday, further action was unlikely until February 25 -- two days before the Treasury chief's deadline -- because of a shortened congressional work schedule in coming weeks due in part to the Presidents Day break.

Republicans across the ideological spectrum agree that another round of political brinksmanship could harm their party after it got blamed for October's federal government shutdown. http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/11/politics/house-gop-debt-ceiling/

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