As July 1 draws closer, with Congress planning a holiday recess, a bipartisan group of senators say they’ve come up with a possible breakthrough -- a floating rate for Staffords, the 10-year Treasury borrowing rate plus 1.85 percent.
That proposal still has the deficit-reduction element that Reid opposes; it would pare the government’s red ink by $1 billion over 10 years, according to a statement from West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, Maine Independent Angus King, Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn, North Carolina Republican Richard Burr and Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander.
Inaction Predicted
Both Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, and the panel’s top Republican, Alexander, predicted that the Senate would go home for a week-long July 4 break without acting.
Alexander, a former U.S. education secretary, said that if lawmakers can reach a consensus this week, Congress can return July 8 and approve the change retroactively.
Neither party has been able to gain a political advantage over the other for inaction by Congress.
Unlike a year ago, “this issue has much less traction,” said political scientist Bruce Altschuler at the State University of New York at Oswego. “People don’t know who to blame. They know somebody is at fault. They are not sure who.”