House Democrats Weigh Sacrifice and Await Word in Debt Talks

For the past seven months, House Democrats have had a rough gig. Relegated to the minority by the Tea Party wave, they were forced to watch helplessly as the new House Majority passed reams of go-nowhere conservative legislation in party line votes and  have been excluded from key private talks between President Obama and their Republican counterparts. And next week, when the House is expected to take up the inchoate deficit-reduction bill Obama and House Republicans are working to craft, Democrats will be thrust back into an unpleasant role.

While House Republicans are still trumpeting the wisdom of Cut, Cap and Balance, the Senate tabled that option on Friday morning. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to table the contingency plan crafted by he and Mitch McConnell ensures that a bill that raises the debt ceiling while reducing the federal deficit will originate in the House. The only apparent path forward, then, would be for the House to pass a bill based on an agreement struck by Obama and House Speaker John Boehner. While the deal isn’t done, its contours are coming into focus — a multi-part measure that would include trillions in spending cuts, including to entitlement programs that Democrats have sought to protect, as well as an additional phase that would broaden the tax base and flatten tax rates to raise revenues.

In the face of opposition from Tea Party Republicans, the measure might need as many as 100 Democratic votes to pass the House. A day after Democratic Senators unloaded on the White House, House Democrats on Friday expressed concerns that Obama was appeasing Republicans while taking their own votes for granted. They also reiterated their opposition to slashing entitlement benefits, which they have insisted on preserving as a matter of principle and politics, particularly if Republicans are unwilling to accept higher taxes on the wealthy. Democratic advocacy groups are urging members to nix an agreement that falls short of these benchmarks. “Any debt deal that includes deep cuts to programs that the middle class depends on, like Medicare and Social Security, or fails to ensure the rich and corporations pay their share is a bad deal, and should be rejected by all in the House and Senate,” Moveon.org executive director Justin Ruben said in a statement.

Some Democratic members are holding the line. “Benefit cuts to Medicare and Social Security can’t happen,” says Rob Andrews, a New Jersey Democrat, “and revenues have to.” Andrews downplayed the caucus’s frustration, saying that members have been well represented in negotiations by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her No. 2, Steny Hoyer, who met with Obama at the White House for nearly two hours on Thursday night. But other members said they hadn’t been briefed on the current state of the negotiations and were concerned that Obama would ask them to violate first principles and expect them to help him carry a compromise across the line. Eighty-one Democrats backed the April agreement to avoid a government shutdown, and a similar figure will be required this time.

Cutting a major deal would require both sides to agree to unpalatable components — for the Democrats, changes to cherished programs; for the Republicans, new revenues — and, just as important, agreeing on enforcement measures to ensure that Congress lives up to its word and passes an overhaul of the tax code. “Both sides are understandably committed to making sure there are mechanisms to make sure something happens if nothing happens,” says Andrews, who believes these triggers are “where the action is” at this point in the negotiations.

For now, Democrats are reserving judgment as they wait to see the legislation. “What the bill looks like will depend on who can vote for it,” Pelosi said. But the minority leader voted against the spring budget agreement, remarking at the time that she felt “no ownership” of the pact sealed by Obama, Hoyer and Republicans.  If a bill is to pass, plenty of Democrats will have to support it, but it’s likely that many of them will have to swallow something bitter.

“You can’t pass it without our votes,” Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, says. But with so many Republicans dismissing the reality that a failure to raise the debt limit will trigger a cascade of ugly consequences, Connolly says, the President is banking on Democrats’ willingness to make concessions in order to avert catastrophe. “We’ve always been the responsible party,” he says, “and we always pay a price for that.”