Some Georgia members skeptical, but open to emerging Senate deal

Tuesday is shaping up as a critical day for figuring out whether Congress and the White House can wriggle out of a jam and reopen the government while raising the federal borrowing limit in time to pay the nation’s bills.

A bipartisan Senate deal began to take shape Monday, and Georgia’s rank-and-file members in both chambers will learn more Tuesday about a deal that, according to reports, would end the two week partial shutdown at least temporarily and move an encounter with the debt ceiling from Thursday to February.

In the meantime, the deal would put in motion a House-Senate conference committee to settle the budgeting impasse that helped create the crisis. As Georgia Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss mingled with colleagues on the Senate floor Monday evening, he said the plan was not getting strong reviews.

“It’s not going to be an easy vote,” he said. “It’s not a giveaway vote by any means. … There’s nothing in there” for Republicans.

Chambliss said he wanted to learn more about the details of the emerging deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., before committing his vote.

The fact that the deal as sketched out in news reports included only minor tinkering with the new health care law does not go over well with conservative House Republicans whose “defund Obamacare” push helped provoke the shutdown, as President Barack Obama refused any concessions on his signature law as a way to keep the government running.

Chambliss, who is not running for re-election next year, said the Obamacare confrontation cost Republicans leverage to get any budget concessions in a debt ceiling deal.

“In my opinion, that was not a very good strategy to start with and folks got backed into a corner on that,” Chambliss said.

Georgia’s Republican House members are as a group more conservative than their Senate counterparts, and many strongly backed the defund Obamacare push that was led in part by Rep. Tom Graves of Ranger. Only two voted to raise the debt ceiling in 2011 as part of a deal that included $2.1 trillion in spending cuts, leading to this year’s across-the-board “sequestration” cuts.

Those two — Reps. Tom Price of Roswell and Rob Woodall of Lawrenceville — said Monday they were wary of any plan cooked up by the Senate. But they were not ruling out supporting something that could force a serious budget negotiation, with teeth to implement it.

“The ideas are big, but the details are small, and they have to be worked out carefully and together,” Woodall said. “I could imagine a scenario that gave a temporary debt ceiling increase that gave time to sort that issue out.”

But Woodall said he is less inclined to support a status quo stop-gap spending bill to reopen the government, as he’d rather work out individual spending bills under the normal legislative process.

Price said a short-term solution is not his preferred outcome. He stressed that a Senate deal is not necessarily the final deal, but he was open to the premise.

“Anything that moves us closer to actually talking about the real issues is a positive,” Price said. “I wouldn’t characterize anything as a victory, goodness gracious. It’s been a calamitous couple of weeks for the American people.”

Asked what they are hearing from the people they represent, Woodall, Price and Atlanta Democratic U.S. Rep. David Scott said they are getting reinforcement and support for their positions.

Price said the message he hears is: “Don’t quit fighting.” Scott said of his constituents: “They are really sick and tired of the tea party.”

Scott said he would consider voting for a short-term solution, but it could not include changes to the health care law.

“You can’t allow the precedent to be set that you can hold the government hostage,” Scott said. “You can shut down the government if you don’t like a law, and don’t open the government until you defund this law or weaken this law or do that. That is fundamentally wrong.”

Among state officials, concern was growing about the consequences of a default on the national debt.

Gov. Nathan Deal said the state Office of Workforce Development and health care initiatives that rely on federal grants could soon face serious strains.

“The major concern I have is if the debt ceiling is not addressed, the federal government could reduce payments to the Medicaid program,” he said. “And we don’t have the resources to make up the funding.”

Others are just beginning to grasp the potential significance of the debt limit. State Sen. Jack Hill, who heads the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he hasn’t instructed his staff to game-plan the debt crisis’ impact.