White House, lawmakers speed up debt-reduction talks

By Lori Montgomery,
WashPost
Published: June 20

The White House and congressional leaders are accelerating negotiations over the biggest debt-reduction package in at least two decades amid mounting concern that the effort is running out of time.

Over the next six weeks, negotiators must strike a bipartisan compromise to slice more than $2 trillion from the federal budget by 2021, reduce the complex plan to writing and persuade a bitterly divided Congress to support it.

But one or both chambers is due to be on break for three of those weeks. And when Congress last reached a big debt-reduction deal, it took more than a month just to draft the legislation. That leaves little room for chance — or last-minute negotiating to marshal votes for what is likely to be a politically difficult package of unprecedented cuts to long-
sacrosanct federal programs.

“I keep talking to other colleagues who have confidence that someone else is working things out,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a freshman member of the Budget Committee. “But I keep looking around thinking, ‘If we’re not doing it, then who is?’ ”

(More here.)