House to vote on Reid’s debt bill — before he offers it

The vote’s set for 2:15 p.m. ET or shortly thereafter. With the outcome assured, why bother going through the motions and formally administering the coup de grace? Simple: Reid’s going to call a cloture vote on something at around 1 a.m. ET tonight(he has to do so for procedural reasons in order to beat the clock on Tuesday), and if he can’t hammer out a deal with McConnell before then, he might be tempted to call Senate Republicans’ bluff by offering his own bill as it currently stands and daring them to filibuster it. Boehner wants to discourage that by killing that bill now and forcing him, at the very least, to present something tonight that’s more favorable to Republicans.

Per the last link, an intriguing hint that Senate Dems might cave at the last second:

Reid, a canny legislative infighter, appears to be leaving himself a safety valve, however: The Democratic leader has set an evening Senate vote that essentially would leave Boehner’s bill on parliamentary life support — leaving Senate leaders the option of revive it at the last minute if no other deal to raise the debt ceiling is reached.

I assume that means they might strip out the BBA and pass the rest of Boehner’s bill as is, and then hope that Boehner can get a few Democrats to join him next time in passing that through the House. Meanwhile, what happens if Reid’s bill fails tonight? Well, then things get messy: “Even if a bipartisan accord is reached when the Senate is in the cloture process, Reid would need unanimous consent to swap in any compromise measure, an unlikely scenario given the passions in the fight.” I.e. DeMint or Rand Paul could block any new compromise bill before Tuesday on their own, which means it’s now or never. No wonder veteran lawmakers are starting to think they won’t make the deadline. We’ll know more soon: Reid’s called a presser for 3 p.m. ET, no doubt to whine about the House shooting his own bill down.

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