The new Republican plan: a continuing resolution for the debt ceiling?

What just happened?

According to WaPo, the new Republican plan to deal with the debt ceiling, is to delay action on it until May 18, but allow the Treasury to extend borrowing above the debt ceiling.  On May 19, the debt ceiling would be automatically increased to match whatever borrowing the Treasury did up to that day.  If the Senate does not pass a budget by April 15, their salaries would be held in an escrow until the end of the 2-year congressional session.

One Republican, Representative Paul Labrador, said to WaPo, "The agenda is to get to balance in 10 years, to have a balanced budget."  That seems at odds with what their move actually means.

In this gambit, House Republicans are telling Americans that, if they do not agree with whatever the Senate comes up with (cuts to avoid having to increase the debt ceiling), they will not increase the debt ceiling, this Summer.  In other words, nothing has changed, and Republicans are forcing Democrats to either accept the debt ceiling or its equivalent of the Balanced Budget Amendment, while distancing themselves from having to assume responsibility for the debt ceiling and the BBA equivalence of an immediately balanced budget.

Same as it ever was, it seems, but let me break it down.

Separate issues

Let's say that the Senate goes ahead and passes a budget, but that budget has barely any current spending cuts in it.  Senators get their pay reinstated, but House Republicans will demand -- yet again -- to keep the debt ceiling in place, to force cuts that the Senate budget did not include.  This is the "I called your bluff" move that Harry Reid could pull on Republicans.

The Senate

More on that "I called your bluff" move: I think Republicans must be poor chess players.  On the surface, sure, it seems like a smart move to force Harry Reid to write a budget and get it passed in the Senate, but that's just the first move.  In chess, you're supposed to visualize the end game, and predict the possible scenarios where your attempts fail.

Reid has the caucus of 55 senators -- more than enough to get a deal passed -- and all he needs to do is to finagle a patchwork budget that appeals to those 55.

At that point, Republican senators will have to filibuster to block the passing of the torch back to the ideologically divergent and disparate House.  Given the history of obstructionism of Mitch McConnell, it's assured that they will continue to do so; a tiger cannot change its stripes.  With or without the filibusters, Republicans will find the blame squarely in their laps, you see, because as was the case with the fiscal cliff deal, the House defaults to a majority of Democrats agreeing to any compromise deal, and not the other way around.

Once that new senate budget is in the hands of House Republicans, they will squawk about how it does not include the depth of cuts they demanded, and settle back to obstructing Congressional movement.  And you wonder why Reid has relied on continuing resolutions to keep government funded?

Nothing ever goes as planned...but nothing's changed

In between now and then, some people will figure this stuff out, and minds will change, which will alter the eventual outcome of this entire scenario.  But I think it's safe to say, Republicans will lose on this issue.  They, after all, haven't run away from the BBA and the needs for immediate cuts.

In fact, if you look at the past Paul Ryan budgets that the House passed (and the Senate punted on), their budgets did not balance until long past a decade into the future.  Now, Boehner has announced that they want to essentially speed up Paul Ryan's cuts.

And according to The Hill, conservatives insist on using the sequester cuts as leverage to force........cuts.

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Update: There's no filibuster on senate budget resolutions, but it's a bit more complicated than that, per The Economist.