House Dems back Reid bill but warn about GOP-friendly changes

House Democrats backed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) debt-limit proposal while warning the top Democrat not to give away too much more to Republicans in his final negotiations.

After a caucus meeting in the Capitol, Democrats resolved to vote for the Reid plan even while they denounced the Republican majority for bringing it to the House floor solely to vote it down.

Democrats “will overwhelmingly say yes not because they like this bill but because they believe it is a compromise that can work,” the second-ranking Democrat, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (Md.), said in an emotional floor speech on the Reid plan.

{mosads}All but 11 Democrats voted for the Reid bill, which garnered no Republican votes and failed easily. Immediately after the vote, officials said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Reid would head to the White House for a 3:30 p.m. meeting.

“The president will meet with Leaders Reid and Pelosi at the White House at 3:30 p.m. to receive an update on the situation in the House and Senate,” a White House official said as the congressional leaders were arriving.

Reid said afterward that no deal had been reached during the meeting.

The Reid bill would raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling through 2012 while reducing the deficit by $2.2 trillion over a decade. Reid has characterized it as accepting Republican demands that taxes not be increased and that spending cuts exceed new debt. The GOP has criticized the bill as “full of gimmicks” and opposes its cuts to military spending.

“We do not believe it’s perfect but we believe it’s possible,” Hoyer said.

Pelosi, in a fiery floor speech, urged Democrats to support the Reid bill. “It’s time to end this theater of the absurd,” Pelosi said. She said Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) “chose to go to the dark side” by amending his own legislation, which passed the House on Friday, to satisfy conservative members of his conference.

Liberal Democrats exited their caucus meeting saying they would reluctantly support the Reid plan, but it was unclear whether their votes could be assured for an eventual compromise before the Treasury Department’s Tuesday deadline for default.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said Democrats’ support on Saturday “doesn’t guarantee our support for something that goes further to the right.”

With many if not most House Republicans opposed to a compromise with Democrats, the votes of House liberals may be needed to pass a bill that emerges from the Senate.

“I will not vote to send this nation into default,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said as she departed the caucus meeting. She voted for the Reid bill.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), a former co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she was “weighing how much worse it could get before we get it back.”

“I have a hard time voting for this if I vote for it. I cannot vote for anything worse,” Woolsey said. She ultimately voted for the Reid legislation.

Scores of liberal Democrats had threatened to oppose the measure in order to protest the absence of new tax revenues and the steep cuts in discretionary spending. 

“I view this as a sacrifice,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said. “This vote today was to give the Senate the opportunity … to commit to revenues as we go forward.”

The Democrats who voted against Reid’s proposal were Reps. John Barrow (Ga.),
Dan Boren (Okla.), Bruce Braley (Iowa), Dave Loebsack (Iowa), Jim Matheson (Utah), Mike McIntyre (N.C.), Colin Peterson (Minn.), Peter Visclosky (Ind.), Mike Ross (Ark.), Kurt Schrader (Ore.) and David Wu (Ore.).

— This story was updated at 3:47 p.m.