Bloomberg Says Debt Ceiling Debate Hurting Everyone; House GOP Sets Vote On Revamped Bill
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The debt delay is already hurting New York City, the mayor says.
The stalemated political tug of war over raising the debt ceiling has Mayor Michael Bloomberg saying it's already hurting our reputation in the minds of investors around the world.
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"The damage to this country is being done right now with this discussion," said Bloomberg. "The fact that we can have an argument about whether we should pay our debts, the fact the government can't come together and pass laws that this country needs passed and not just about fiscal policy, is very worrisome."
Meanwhile, the House Republicans are expected to go ahead with a vote Thursday on a revamped debt-limit bill to stave off the possible government default that could happen next week.
The newly modified plan by House Speaker John Boehner however, faced a veto threat by the White House and unanimous opposition among Senate Democrats.
The new measure depends on caps on agency budgets to cut more than $900 billion from the deficit over the coming decade while permitting a commensurate increase in the nation's borrowing to allow the government to pay its bills.
But the bill does not meet President Barack Obama's demand for an increase in the debt limit large enough to prevent a rerun of the current crisis next year, in the heat of the 2012 election campaign.
Instead, Obama supports an alternative drafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., that contains comparable cuts to agency operating budgets but also claims savings from lowball estimates of war costs. Reid's plan would provide a record-breaking $2.7 trillion in additional borrowing authority, enough to tide the government over through 2012. Reid, however, is plainly short of the votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster.
In fact, Boehner's plan has enough in common with Reid's, including the establishment of a special congressional panel to recommend additional spending cuts this fall, that Reid hinted a compromise could be easy to snap together.
"Magic things can happen here in Congress in a very short period of time under the right circumstances,'' Reid told reporters.
In Bloomberg's words, "Forget about which end of Pennsylvania Avenue and which side of the aisle, it's everybody."
If House conservatives torpedo the bill, any follow-up probably would require Democratic votes to pass. That, in turn, would mean smaller spending cuts than Republicans are seeking in exchange for raising the nation's $14.3 trillion debt limit.
(TM and Copyright 2011 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
