Brian Beutler names the 11 Republicans that Democrats hope to pull over to vote for Harry Reid’s debt limit bill. Breaking them roughly into that favorite unit of the moment, the tranche:
The Gang of Six Tranche: Coburn, Crapo, Chambliss. Members of the Gang of Six who see, in the Supercommittee that Reid’s bill would create,* something to move their ideas forward.
The Moderate Tranche: Snowe, Collins, Kirk and Murkowski, who often break with the party on fiscal issues.
The I’m-Up-for-Re-Election Tranche: Brown, who has basically indicated that he can go with this.
The Nothing-to-Fear Tranche: Corker, Alexander, Hutchison. She’s not running for re-election. Alexander and Corker are both safe as milk.
Major Garrett ran down the similiarities between Reid and Boehner, and they remain intact even in Boehner 2.0. One of the things to watch is the formation of the fast-track committees – both bills contain them, but the fast-tracking is cleaner in the Boehner version, and the next series of cuts are reliant on the committee’s recommendations going into effect. When I talked to Olympia Snowe earlier today, she was adamant about the need to tie the committee to the second debt limit increase. She’d just been through too many situations where triggers and promises of cuts didn’t pan out. “Fool me once,” she explained.
*So would Boehner’s. It’s one of the big areas of agreement
