Well, it looks at though we're in for a weekend of political theater. As Lawrence O'Donnell noted when talking to Sen. Kent Conrad about the latest coming out of the Senate tonight, it appears Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is not done pulling political stunts. Apparently McConnell just told Leader Reid that he will not negotiate directly with him, and will only negotiate with President Obama.
McConnell also told Reid that he would not allow Reid's bill to pass with a simple majority vote, so in other words, he's going to allow the Senate to filibuster. This means that the Senate would not be allowed to vote on Reid's bill until Sunday at 1am and in the mean time, the House would be voting on Reid's bill sometime tomorrow.
If McConnell wants to filibuster Reid's bill, I say it's time for them to break out the cots, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen since the Senate already adjourned tonight. It would be nice to see a clean bill pass that simply raises the debt ceiling instead of these bills they've been negotiating passing. I guess we'll find out shortly if that's too much to hope for or not. In the mean time, they're taking this dangerous game of chicken with our economy right up to the wire with more stalling from Republicans.
UPDATE: Here's more on the latest from The Hill -- Reid alters debt plan to attract GOP support:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has revised his plan to raise the debt limit in a last-ditch bid to attract Republican support.
The biggest change is that Reid would give the president almost unilateral power to raise the debt limit, borrowing an idea introduced by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Reid would have President Obama request a $2.4 trillion debt-limit increase in two installments of $1.2 trillion each. The requests would be subject to congressional resolutions of disapproval, but these would do little to restrict the president.
Obama could override any resolution of disapproval, and it would take a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress to override him.
According to a Senate Democratic aide, Reid also increased the total level of spending cuts from $2.2 trillion to $2.4 trillion, in part by using the January baseline -- a budget maneuver House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) used on a previous version of his debt-limit plan. The January budget baseline does not count cuts Congress implemented in legislation passed this spring to avert a government shutdown.
So far Reid has had trouble attracting Republicans to his bill. Moderate Republican Sen. Scott Brown (Mass.) said he would vote for it, but otherwise it has received scant bipartisan support.
Reid filed a motion on Friday evening to end a GOP filibuster of his plan, setting up a vote for early Sunday morning. Reid would need 60 votes and support from at least seven Republicans to advance his proposal.
Reid accused McConnell of filibustering at the "worst possible time" by not allowing a simple majority vote, while McConnell said Republicans would support an immediate vote with a 60-vote threshold. Read on...
