Subject: The Debt Limit and the "Calendar of Chaos"
From: Dana <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2015 22:59:16 -0400

Mike & Co. --

The pattern is familiar from last month's CR and almost every must-pass piece of legislation considered by Congress the past five years -- there is majority support for a solution but it cannot come to a vote until the House has considered an alternative proposed by the Freedom Caucus that cannot pass in the Senate and would be vetoed in any event.  

There is a Caucus-supported (hopelessly outlandish) alternative regarding the debt limit on the table but, distracted and disorganized more than usual during this Boehner-Ryan interregnum, House leadership hasn't settled on a way forward on consideration  with time running out. 

That's the bottom line right now on the debt limit.  Details below.  

Best,

Dana 

----------

House GOP leadership is still searching for a plan for raising the debt limit now that a proposal pushed by conservatives does not appear to have enough support and is unlikely to receive a vote this week.

This afternoon, Nancy Pelosi summarized the timing in the House on the bid to increase the debt limit as follows:  "It’s only a matter of hours until we have to act in the House. We have to act really by tomorrow. This calendar of chaos … is really coming down to hours, days, weeks."

The President has long insisted that Congress send him a clean debt limit bill. Such a bill could probably clear Congress. Senate Republicans had planned to take up the House bill and amend it in a manner that could pass the Senate, potentially making it a clean debt-ceiling measure to attract Democratic votes. But GOP leaders said they were planning contingency plans in case the House stumbles, a number of Senators have said.

Generally, Senate Republicans are trying to counter the image created by the disarray in the House by projecting a sense of calm and ability to govern.  Accordingly, here is Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn's take today on where things stand:  "Shame on us if we haven't sort of thought about that in advance and war-gamed it.  It's possible we could pass something, and we send it back to the House, and they pass it before it gets to the president. We're getting ready to get on a glide path to get to a conclusion here."

The alternative on the table would lift the debt limit until 2017, attempt to freeze all agency regulations for at least a year, try to force Congress to stay in session until it passes all appropriations bills and forbid the Senate from filibustering spending bills after October.

The consensus is that it is a non-starter itself but a first step before the inevitable: a vote on a debt limit bill without strings.

But the next step is uncertain.  House GOP leadership is likely to abandon tentative plans to vote on the alternative, hatched by the Republican Study Committee, throwing into question how Congress is going to lift the borrowing limit before a November 3 deadline.

House leadership was considering a vote on the proposal, tune Terms of Credit Act, tomorrow, but GOP insiders said they will not put the bill on the floor.  A House whip check last night showed the party several dozen votes short.   It's back to the drawing board now -- “We’ll continue conversations with our members on how best to address the debt ceiling,” a Republican leadership aide said today. 

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy made it clear this afternoon that there is no emergency and that his colleagues are hard at work and being creative: “We’ve got a lot of different ideas cooking.  We’ll have to wait and see.”

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On-Deck:  Debt and Debt Limit

Recent Updates:  

Debt and Debt Limit  (Oct. 22)
SEC Nominations  (Oct. 20)
TPP/Currency Manipulation  (Oct. 15)
Ex-Im Reauthorization  (Oct. 9)
FRB Dividend  (Oct. 7)
Jobs Report (Oct. 2)
Fiduciary Rule  (Oct. 1)
FY2016 Budget/CR  (Sept. 29)
Trade/TPP  (Sept. 25)
GSE Reform  (Sept. 25)
Carried Interest  (Sept. 23)
FRB Interest Rate Policy  (Sept. 23)
Bush Tax Cuts  (Sept. 15)
HTF/Pay-fors  (July 24)
ITax Extenders  (July 22)
Puerto Rico  (Jul. 23)
Shelby 2.0  (June 24) 

> On Oct 20, 2015, at 9:01 PM, Dana <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> 
> Mike & Co. --
> 
> Wheels are in motion on almost every major front right now in Congress, with Paul Ryan announcing tonight that he is a to serve as a unity candidate for Speaker, if all the major caucuses of the House Republican conference endorse him.  He is giving the conference until this Friday to decide whether it is behind him. 
> 
> Some key issues won't be addressed until a successor to Speaker Boehner has been elected in November, others will necessarily be teed up if not resolved before then. 
> 
> Meanwhile, the hearing schedule this week includes:
> 
> •  Senate Budget on ideas for reforming the federal budget making process, tomorrow
> 
> •  House Financial Services on housing finance reform, tomorrow 
> 
> •  House Transportation on the Highway Trust Fund reauthorization, Thursday (mark-up)   
> 
> Below, a review of the SEC nominations announced today.   In the days to follow, the status of such issues as the debt limit increase, the CR extension, and the Ex-Im and Highway Trust Fund reauthorizations. 
> 
> Best,
> 
> Dana
> 
> -----------
> 
> Today, President Obama announced nominations of candidates to replace departing SEC Commissioners Luis Aguilar, whose term expired in June, and former Daniel Gallagher, who left the agency this month.
> 
> For the Aguilar seat, reserved for a Democrat, Obama nominated Lisa Fairfax, a law school professor supported by allies of Sen. Elizabeth Warren who have wrangled with the White House over this position for several months.  Investor protection advocates pressured the administration to withdraw its initial nominee for the job, a corporate lawyer who had represented pro-business groups.  
> 
> For Gallagher's Republican post, Obama has put forward the name of Hester Peirce, a researcher at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.  
> 
> Should these nominees be confirmed, it would be the first time a majority of SEC Commissioners are women.  In fact, four out of five of the Commissioners would be.    
> Fairfax's research has focused on corporate governance,an increasingly contentious issue for the agency.  In February, she supported an Episcopalian church's effort to rein in firearm sales at Wal-Mart Stores Inc via a shareholder proposal.
> 
> She was previously a professor at the University of Maryland law school and worked at law firm Ropes & Gray.  She was recently named a member of the SEC investor advisory committee, a panel of experts who make rulemaking recommendations to the agency.  In May 2014, she hosted a conference that included officials from Public Citizen, Better Markets and the AFL-CIO.  Fairfax is a Harvard Law School graduate.
> 
> Hester Peirce, a researcher at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, would replace former SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher, who left the agency earlier this month.
> 
> Peirce has won applause from Republicans for her extensive research and criticisms of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.  Her positions on financial regulation will likely draw fire from Senate Democrats who have privately expressed concern with Peirce's views on Dodd-Frank.
> 
> Before Mercatus, Peirce was a banking committee staffer for Sen. Richard Shelby during the drafting of Dodd-Frank.  She worked with the Republican SEC Commissioner Michael Piwowar in 2011 when they were both Shelby staffers on the Banking Committee.  Piwowar was the Republican economist.  Both of them worked on the confirmation process for Gallagher and Commissioner Luis Aguilar in June 2011.
> 
> At the SEC, Peirce worked for Commissioner Paul Atkins. She also clerked for Judge Roger B. Andewelt of the Court of Federal Claims in Washington.  She currently serves on the SEC's Investment Advisory Committee.
> 
> Sen. Schumer, a member of the Banking Committee that will vote on the nominations, said that one of the chief issues is whether the SEC will enact a rule requiring public companies to disclose their political spending.  
> 
> ------------
> 
> On-Deck:  Debt and Debt Limit
> 
> Recent Updates:  
> 
> SEC Nominations  (Oct. 20)
> Debt and Debt Limit  (Oct. 16)
> TPP/Currency Manipulation  (Oct. 15)
> Ex-Im Reauthorization  (Oct. 9)
> FRB Dividend  (Oct. 7)
> Jobs report (Oct. 2)
> Fiduciary Rule  (Oct. 1)
> FY2016 Budget/CR  (Sept. 29)
> Trade/TPP  (Sept. 25)
> GSE Reform  (Sept. 25)
> Carried Interest  (Sept. 23)
> FRB Interest Rate Policy  (Sept. 23)
> Bush Tax Cuts  (Sept. 15)
> HTF/Pay-fors  (July 24)
> ITax Extenders  (July 22)
> Puerto Rico  (July 14)
> Shelby 2.0  (June 24) 
> 
> 
>