Washington Examiner breaking Saturday news

Examiner Politics Saturday EXTRA: Weekend breaking news & comment from The Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential bloggers

Byron York - For Reid, Durbin, and Obama, a (very) partisan record on debt ceiling

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has frequently accused Republicans of playing partisan politics in the debt ceiling crisis. Read More

Mark Tapscott - Note to GOP prez contenders: All five Iowa representatives opposed Boehner plan
Political junkies should take note: All five of Iowa's representatives in Congress voted against House Speaker John Boehner's final compromise plan to resolve the debt-ceiling impasse. Iowapolitics.com has details: "All five of Iowa's congressmen -- three Democrats and two Republicans -- this evening voted against legislation authorizing a limited increase in the $14.3 trillion debt limit in exchange for more than $900 billion in spending cuts. Read More

Conn Carroll - The two big differences between Cut, Cap, and Balance and the Boehner bill

Everyone in my twitter feed seems to be saying that there is no difference between the new debt hike bill Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, unveiled today and the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act that was passed earlier this month. This is wrong.  Read More

Mark Tapscott - Why aren't liberal papers reporting Pelosi's other-worldly criticism of Boehner plan?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has made some incredibly naive, ill-informed and downright goofy statements before but her comment yesterday about why House Democrats oppose House Speaker John Boehner's debt-ceiling crisis bill surely must take the cake for absurdity: "What we're trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget. We're trying to save life on this planet as we know it today," Pelosi said. Read More

Brian Hughes - Obama dismisses Boehner bill, says "almost out of time" to raise debt ceiling

President Obama urged lawmakers Friday to compromise on a solution to raise the debt ceiling by the Aug. 2 deadline, seeking to ratchet up pressure on Republicans reeling from their failure to unite behind a debt deal. “There are plenty of ways out of this mess, but we are almost out of time,” Obama said at the White House in a brief statement to the press. Read More

Examiner Senior Political Writer Philip Klein has been been blogging with updates throughout the debt ceiling House vote drama:

Is it now fair to say the Boehner plan was a waste of time?

Throughout the week, House Speaker John Boehner’s plan to raise the debt limit was attacked on two fronts. Democrats said he was wasting time on a plan that had no chance of passing the Senate, while conservatives argued that pushing the plan was undermining Cut, Cap and Balance. By deciding to add a Balanced Budget Amendment to his own plan this morning to gain enough votes to secure passage, Boehner proved both sets of critics correct. Read More

Does the GDP report help Boehner get his plan across the finish line?

At a press conference yesterday, I asked House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to respond to the criticism among conservatives that if Republicans were to hold out past Aug. 2, they'd be in a better position to negotiate a deal. Read More

House rejects Reid plan; 246 - 173

On Saturday, the House of Representatives rejected Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's proposal to hike the debt limit, 246 to 173, with 11 Democrats voting against it. The vote was expected, and was held to demonstrate that Reid's plan can't pass the House, just as last night the Democratic-controlled Senate rejected House Speaker John Boehner's plan to hike the debt limit last night to show it can't pass the Senate. Read More

43 GOP Senators sign letter opposing Reid debt limit plan

Forty-three Republican Senators have signed a letter opposing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's plan to hike the debt limit. Read More

Senate rejects Boehner plan, Reid won't allow vote tonight on his own plan
As expected, the U.S. Senate voted 59 to 41 to table House Speaker John Boehner's plan to increase the debt limit that had been passed by the House just hours earlier. Then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., declined a GOP offer to hold a cloture vote on his own plan tonight. Read More

Boehner plan squeaks through House

House Speaker John Boehner's plan to raise the debt limit squeaked through the House of Representatives by a 218 to 210 margin, with 22 Republicans joining every Democrat in opposing the measure. The fact that the vote was so close, even after Boehner added a Balanced Budget Amendment component, suggests he was many votes short last night, when he attempted to pass an earlier version, but instead spent hours arm-twisting holdouts. Read More

Where things stand on the debt limit: House vote expected around 6 pm

In a few hours (we're told somewhere around 5:45 to 6:15), the House is expected to vote on Speaker John Boehner's plan to raise the debt ceiling. Updated with a Balanced Budget Amendment component, his bill is all but assured of passage. At that point, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., promises that he will immediately vote to table the bill, and introduce his own measure. Unless all 100 Senators agree to allow him to hold a vote on it immediately, he'll have to vote on cloture, which will set up a vote for 1 am Sunday morning. Read More