McConnell is in favor of it:
McConnell embraced a plan by Senator Susan Collins — the Republican from Maine — on Sunday, which would raise the debt limit through January and fund the government through the end of March, while delaying for two years Obamacare’s medical-device tax and require income verification in order to qualify for Obamacare subsidies.
I truly want to get a deal but this one would be, to my mind, merely a delay in the crisis, even an extension of it. If the GOP were to take the debt ceiling off the table, or come up with a way to do it indefinitely, we’d be talking. When hostage-takers release the hostage, they don’t usually get to keep their weapons. But if that is not an option, then, as an interim step, why not raise the debt limit through January 2015 and let the midterms decide the fiscal future?
And if the GOP needs a face-saver, I suppose K-Street’s medical device tax is as meaningless a concession as any. It’s not integral to the ACA. And you can see why the president might have negotiated such a thing outside of any self-induced debt crisis. As for sequestration, I have no problems with keeping spending at those levels until March, along Collins lines, and I think the Democrats should be very wary of over-playing their hand. We are in an emergency here – and haggling over spending levels for the next six months does not seem to me to be a good enough reason to hold up a potential deal.
Ezra explains why Democrats have rejected it nonetheless:
Two main arguments were made against the Collins deal. First, it locks in sequestration levels of spending for six months. Key Senate Democrats see that as a much larger, and more dangerous, concession than the old CR, which only agrees to it for six weeks. Second, the deal’s delay of the medical device tax meant it was, in fact, a concession in order to reopen the government — and Democrats think it’s important to persuade the GOP that they can’t win anything through this kind of hostage taking.
I don’t think that’s a big win. I think it’s a minimal concession for them to save face in what is already a political disaster for them. Jonathan Cohn adds:
Reid and McConnell are still talking. Those talks will probably be the basis of whatever agreement ends this crisis. But Democrats have established a pretty simple test for new proposals: Is it a deal Democrats would make in normal circumstances, without a shutdown and without the threat of default? So far, nothing Republicans have suggested comes close to meeting that criteria.
I think adjusting a medical devices tax in return for a sequester-level CR and a lifting of the debt ceiling till after the mid-terms would be easily a deal Dems would accept under normal circumstances. The key issue, in my view, is the debt ceiling threat. That’s the fiscal weapon of mass destruction we have to abolish or defuse indefinitely.
The Dish 