Polls show why the debt vote is so difficult for Democrats, who next year are expected to face an uphill battle to retain their narrow Senate majority in an election likely to focus heavily on spending issues.
Just 16 percent of Americans favor lifting the debt ceiling, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC survey published this month. Nearly six in 10 independents opposed it. Democrats were divided, with nearly half saying they did not know enough to have an opinion.
April 27 (Bloomberg) -- Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill talks about the performance of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the outlook for congressional action on raising the federal debt ceiling. O'Neill speaks with Margaret Brennan on Bloomberg Television's "InBusiness." (This is an excerpt of the full interview. Source: Bloomberg)
“If you’re in a red state, if you’re going to be perceived as a moderate, you want to be able to say that you’re for cutting spending,” said Democratic strategist J.B. Poersch, former executive director of the party’s Senate campaign committee.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) signaled this week that he would be willing to negotiate on the terms of the debt-ceiling legislation. He noted his support for a “deficit cap” that would “prove that we’re willing to do something about the debt.”
Often called a “debt fail-safe trigger,” such a cap has been embraced by President Obama as well, to force tax increases and spending cuts if the nation’s debt as a share of the economy has not stabilized by mid-decade. The White House, however, has proposed this measure separate from the debt-ceiling vote. Republicans oppose a deficit cap, arguing that it would mean an automatic tax hike.
Reid, speaking to reporters on a Wednesday conference call, hinted that a deficit cap could be part of a broad debt deal.
“The White House can speak for themselves, but we’re not going to be drawing any lines in the sand,” Reid said, according to a transcript of the call.
Several Democrats, including Conrad, Udall and Klobuchar, have previously resisted raising the debt ceiling without also addressing the deficit. In 2010, as a condition for their support in an earlier vote to lift the ceiling, they insisted on the creation of a bipartisan panel to examine how to cut the deficit.
Conrad said this week that he would again refuse to back any debt-ceiling extension lasting longer than a year without a deficit-reduction plan.
“I’ve voted for short-term extensions, but I won’t vote for a long-term extension,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And I won’t do it now unless we have a plan to deal with this debt, because, at the end of the day, this represents a fundamental threat to the economic security of the United States.”
Conrad is a key player in the spending debate, both as the Budget Committee chairman and as one of the members of a bipartisan group called the “Gang of Six” that is hashing out a possible compromise on a 2012 budget plan.
Some lawmakers are pinning their hopes on the Gang of Six negotiations to produce a possible deficit-reduction plan to be paired with the debt-ceiling vote. The group could release its framework as early as next week.
But Conrad’s two Democratic colleagues in the negotiations, Sens. Mark R. Warner (Va.) and Richard J. Durbin(Ill.), said Thursday that their talks should not be tied to the debt limit.
Warner said the debt limit “is not something we should mess with.”
Durbin said any threat not to raise the ceiling was “playing with fire.” He added that he wants to “make certain there is an honest effort to deal with our long-term debt, but linking the two is problematic.”
Manchin kicked off a statewide tour this week by announcing his support for a GOP-backed bill to impose spending caps. The measure is viewed by some lawmakers as a possible point of compromise in the debt-limit debate.
He has been asking audiences for a show of hands to test support for lifting the borrowing cap, with overwhelming numbers expressing opposition.
“You have to pay your debt, but when you find yourself in a hole, you ought to stop digging,” Manchin said Thursday in a statement from his office. He accused the White House and House Republican leaders of “playing partisan games.”
He added, “Only in Washington would people argue that the responsible thing to do is raise the debt ceiling and add trillions of dollars in more debt, without a real and responsible debt fix.”
Staff writers Ben Pershing and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
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