THE WHITE HOUSE: Obama is supposed to lay out what tax increases he’s after when the fifth straight day of Cabinet Room budget negotiations gets started at 4:15. After Reid, Pelosi, Durbin and Hoyer nod politely, the president will ask the Republican congressional leaders what extra revenue they have in mind. Once McConnell, Kyl, Cantor and, yes, Boehner all say “none,” the question will be how long the room falls silent before someone makes an awkward joke about walking out.
The rest of the president’s day also will be all about the budget: He’s taping another round of interviews with local TV stations (including NBC-4 here) at 2 to promote his point of view and will meet with Biden and Geithner at 3 to talk about preparations for a looming default in 20 days.
THE SENATE: Convened at 9:30 and is officially debating whether to debate its first spending bill of the year, which would allocate $59 billion for discretionary VA programs and $14 billion for military construction. Combined, it’s an 8 percent drop from what’s being spent this year. (Once mandatory veterans’ benefits are added in, the bill’s grand total goes up to $142 billion.) Some Republicans say it’s both inappropriate and pointless to deliberate any appropriations measure while the big budget numbers are totally up in the air. A vote to for the formal motion to proceed is nonetheless likely by suppertime.
THE HOUSE: Convenes at 10 and at noon will pick up debate on the energy and water appropriations bill. There’s only an outside chance the last amendment will be disposed of and the measure will be passed by 4 — after which members will be free to leave so they can either suit up for (or get a good seat at) the 50th annual Roll Call Congressional Baseball Game.
HE WALKED OUT. DID NOT. DID SO: To the viewers at home, that’s the sum and substance of what was accomplished yesterday by the two principal players (the president and the House majority leader) in what’s becoming the biggest fiscal policy crisis of the modern era.
If the usual adage holds true — that it’s always darkest before the dawn — then yesterday’s testy and impolitic confrontation will be remembered as the negotiating nadir. And there can be reason for optimism that moving the momentum-going-the-wrong-way talks to Camp David (and keeping all the leaking aides and the hungry-for-conflict press corps far from the cabins) might produce handshakes all around in only a couple of days. That’s apparently the president’s plan; he’s ready to invite the congressional Elite Eight for the weekend in the Catoctin Mountains so long as they're all still talking tomorrow. There’s also a chance he might ask the three whips to stay behind in order to further focus the talks. (Boehner's office this morning said the Speaker sees "no need" for a trip to Camp David.)
But if the fabled John McCain adage is true — that it’s always darkest before it’s completely black, as he likes to say — then everyone may as well spend what’s supposed to be a sunny and temperate Saturday and Sunday outside. That’s because the final two weekends before the Aug. 2 default deadline are sure to be spent indoors at the Capitol. Even if a genuine impasse arises tomorrow, and even if the tension and anxiety fester for more than a week, leaders and the rank-and-file alike will have little choice but to hunker down July 23 and 24, and again July 30 and 31, in the countdown-to-disaster rituals of crunching numbers, waiting for the quorum call bells to ring in the middle of the night, making predictable speeches and casting votes on measures designed by both parties for posturing.
HIS GAME TO LOSE: For today, though, the dynamic is that Obama has clearly got the upper hand — and the top Republicans are realizing as much, even if their idealistic and ideological rank-and-file are surely not there yet.
There can be no other reason why Cantor issued his statement lamenting that “nothing can pass the House,” then violated the presumed cone of silence among the big talkers by rushing back to the Capitol and offering reporters his melodramatic version of how yesterday’s talks ended. (In his telling, the president stormed out after warning, “Eric, don’t call my bluff.” In the White House’s version, leaked in response, Cantor interrupts the president three times.) And there can be little other interpretation for McConnell’s warning to the right (on Laura Ingraham’s radio show yesterday) that they’ll suffer the same fate as Gingrich did against Clinton in the 1995-96 government shutdowns if they try to persuade the public of the rightness of their cause after allowing a default: "You know, it's an argument he has a good chance of winning, and all of a sudden we have co-ownership of a bad economy," he said. "That is a very bad position going into an election."
If that’s the leadership consensus, then, they have just three options for cutting their losses and getting the budget battle behind them: They can reverse course on taxes and rush to accept the 4-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases that Obama had been offering, before he raises the pressure by pressing for a 3-to-1 ratio that would mean much less pain for Democratic priorities. They can reverse course on the 1-to-1 ratio of deficit reduction to debt ceiling increase, accept only the 10 years worth of promised cuts both sides say they more or less agree on (assuming they can fine-tune that agreement so the price tag doesn’t keep oscillating between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion) while allowing the debt ceiling to rise from $14.3 trillion to $16.7 trillion. Or they can rally behind the McConnell plan to give Obama that $2.4 trillion in borrowing power before the next election — and hope to come up with some way (and quickly) to pair it with an expedited, up-or-down process for moving legislation in the next year on deep spending cuts, tight enforcement caps and limited entitlement curbs.
CANTOR’S CALL: McConnell has already made clear his preference, and his idea continues to gain bipartisan momentum. Absent a miracle in the next 48 hours, Boehner will probably sign on (at least behind the scenes) by the start of next week. But the key will be Cantor. He will soon be pressed to decide for good how he wants to put his own career on the line. He can either keep taking the tea party’s side, and hope that makes him Speaker someday, or he can find a way to blink and hope his odds are better for remaining in the leadership indefinitely (meaning he’ll have to survive conservatives’ recriminations) than they are for being sacrificed in the next couple of months. Because if there’s a “huge financial calamity” after a default, the construct Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke used yesterday, then Cantor is positioned for now to be the principal political face of it — which either means his elevation within or his elimination from the GOP pantheon.
PART OF A BALANCED REGULATORY DIET: General Mills, ConAgra, Kellogg and several other big food companies are announcing an agreement today to limit their marketing and advertising of hundreds of sugary, salty, fatty and otherwise unhealthy products to children. The new industry standards are designed to replace stricter government-suggested guidelines spurned by the industry. (On the orders of Congress, earlier this year the Federal Trade Commission and several other agencies proposed a system for marketing junk food to kids, but the companies rejected them as too broad and limiting.)
Iowa’s Tom Harkin, the Democratic senator who wrote the language directing the government to develop the standards, labeled the industry alternative as inadequate. But they look to be the only viable option for now. The GOP majority in the House has rallied behind language in the FTC spending bill that would delay the government standards by ordering a cost-benefit study
PLAY BALL: After several weeks of early-morning practices, tonight’s Roll Call baseball game should feature some surprisingly decent play from the lawmakers — and some not-so-surprising partisan intensity (good natured, at least on the surface) both on the left side of the park (predictably, where the Democratic fans congregate behind their guys in the third-base dugout) and on the right side (where else but there for the GOP?). The first pitch is at Nationals Park at 7:05, and the forecast is for a beautifully cloudless and low-humidity evening. Proceeds from the $10 tickets ($134,000 last year) will benefit the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington and the Washington Literacy Council.
The GOP leads the series, 33-16-1, and has captured 10 Roll Call trophies to the Democrats’ two. (A trophy goes to the party that wins three out of five annual games.) But the Democrats have won the past two and so have every incentive tonight, although one of last year’s stars, Anthony Weiner, is no longer available.
The starting pitchers haven’t been announced by the managers — Democrat Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania and Republican Joe Barton of Texas — but for the last few years they’ve been Illinois’ John Shimkus for the GOP and California’s Joe Baca for the Democrats. But lots of attention is being paid to a pair of freshman hurlers: Louisiana Democrat Cedric Richmond and Pennsylvania Republican Lou Barletta.
Now that Jim Bunning and John Ensign are gone, the senatorial contributions to the game are likely to be minimal. (Rand Paul is the only senator on either roster, and he’s in a suit in his program picture.)
— David Hawkings, editor
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