Earlier this week, Suzy Khimm outlined a possible budget deal:
Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Paul Ryan, Congress’s budget leaders, are currently aiming for a deal that would undo somewhere between $60 and $80 billion of sequestration cuts over the next two years, according to Congressional aides and others familiar with the talks. Overall, the deal would raise 2014’s discretionary spending levels from $968 billion to $1 trillion, and Republicans are insisting on additional deficit reduction.
The basic outlines of the deal are still in flux, and those figures could change in the coming days. “The actual numbers are very fluid. I wouldn’t take them as certain by any means,” said one Republican aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Barro discounts such reports:
I can buy the idea that Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.), who is leading negotiations for House Republicans, will reach a spending deal with Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) I remain skeptical that such a deal can pass the House of Representatives with a majority of Republican votes, and without making outside conservative groups go insane, before the government shutdown deadline of Jan. 15.
Josh Green throws more cold water:
What appears to have happened here is that Republican leaders who’d like very much to do something positive gave a sunnier take to outlets such as Politico than was warranted, perhaps in an effort to build momentum toward a deal.
Late on Monday, Bloomberg’s James Rowley and Roxana Tiron reported (in an article not yet online) that Democrats on the budget committee were much less sanguine that an agreement is imminent. “It’s a jump ball right now,” Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told reporters.
This suggests that the budget negotiations may instead follow a much more familiar pattern—rank-and-file members rebelling against leadership; mounting panic and economic uncertainty; and finally, as the shutdown threat looms, a last-minute deal that leaves everybody angry and unsatisfied.
Nevertheless, Chait thinks a deal is possible because “the Republican negotiating position is steadily eroding”:
The original design of sequestration was to impose automatic cuts that would give both parties an incentive to deal: half the cuts would go to domestic programs, which Democrats like, and half to defense, which Republicans like. Republicans persuaded their defense hawks to sit still and be quiet, in the belief that this would increase the GOP’s negotiating leverage. Last January, Boehner boasted, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal editorial page, that he had silenced pro-defense Republicans (“I got that in my back pocket”).
But pro-defense Republicans were only willing to sit quietly in Boehner’s pocket as long as they could rely on their party to ultimately cut a deal to prevent the $20 billion in defense cuts set to take place starting next month. As the deadline gets closer, dissent is popping up everywhere. Defense hawks are openly itching for a budget deal, as are the Republicans who have to actually draw up the cuts to domestic spending required by sequestration. (Those cuts include transportation, infrastructure, and other things Republicans hate much less than aid to poor people.) The Republican dissidents, combined with Democrats, form a potential majority in the House in favor of undoing sequestration.
Beutler considers Boehner’s options:
If Murray and Ryan manage to reach an agreement, conservatives groups — Heritage, Club for Growth and others — will very likely savage it, and if past is prologue, rank-and-file Republicans will follow, and GOP leaders will have to decide once again whether escalating a shutdown fight would be preferable to breaking the Hastert Rule.
If the deal falls through, Speaker John Boehner has posited that he’ll place legislation to renew funding for the government at sequestration levels on the House floor, and finish out the fiscal year without a budget. But it’s unclear if that bill could pass. House Republican military hawks are desperate to avoid this round of automatic cuts, because they primarily reduce defense spending. They’d have to be strong-armed into supporting a bill that allows those cuts to happen. Republicans might think battered Democrats would help them assemble a majority, but I believe they’re mistaken.
The Dish 