Among House GOP freshmen, uncertainty about next steps on debt

The waning hours of the debt-ceiling debate have generated a proliferation of new proposals to solve the crisis. But for many of the House freshmen at the heart of the GOP opposition to a deal with President Obama, all these ideas amount to little more than displays of Washington treachery.

Some have derided the plan of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as “The Pontius Pilate Plan.” A separate proposal by the Gang of Six has been referred to as the Gang of 666 Plan. Indeed, many of these freshmen see the urgent calls for compromise as yet another example of old Washington trying to corrupt their new thinking.

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As the Senate readied last Friday to vote on House Republicans’ “cut, cap and balance” plan, Rep. Mike Kelly (Pa.) crossed the Capitol with a group of other Republican freshmen to watch the chamber take up the measure — and to entreat their Senate counterparts to support it.

Kelly, who represents a northwestern Pennsylvania district, urged his Keystone State colleague, Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr., a Scranton Democrat, that it was time to act on the problem and not discuss it any more. “I’ve been committeed to death,” Kelly recalled telling Casey.

He urged the senator to back House Republicans’ balanced-budget amendment proposal as opposed to a “Plan B” that would give a bipartisan 12-member committee the authority to decide what spending cuts to make.

“The American people have been committeed to death,” Kelly told Casey in the Senate chamber. “It’s time now to move on, and let’s go tackle the other problems that we have.”

The Senate voted 51 to 46 to table the measure. Casey and every other Senate Democrat present rejected the plan. With cut, cap and balance having hit a dead end — and with a potential default a little over a week away — where does Kelly now stand?

With the cut, cap and balance plan, he said Saturday as the debt-limit negotiations went into overtime.

“I don’t think the speaker has to do anything,” Kelly said. “We’ve passed legislation that allows the debt ceiling to rise. What is it about this plan that nobody understands? It allows everything to happen that everybody says needs to happen. The speaker’s done everything he can do. The House has done everything it could do. We passed it. We sent it to them. Now, what’s the holdup?”

“We gave them everything they want,” he added. “The only thing we can’t give them is courage.”

Like Kelly, more than a dozen House Republican freshmen expressed frustration in interviews over the weekend with the debt-ceiling debate. Their concerns are reflective of the broader dilemma facing House Republicans as the debt talks enter crunch time: Rank-and-file members haven’t figured out which way to turn now that their preferred option is off the table, and leaders have yet to show them the path forward.

Rep. Michael G. Grimm (R-N.Y.), whose urban district includes a number of Wall Street professionals, said he’s very worried about the prospect of a national default. But Grimm said he’s not sure what more Republicans can offer, after the Senate rejected cut, cap and balance.