Congressional leaders in both parties are meeting with rank-and-file members of their parties to drum up support Monday for a deal aimed at raising the U.S. debt ceiling while taking steps to cut growing federal deficits.
After the deal was announced by President Barack Obama Sunday evening, the focus shifted from the high-profile negotiations to the task of corralling the votes needed to get the measure through the House and the Senate.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, appears to be confident he can pass the measure through the House following a Sunday night conference call and Monday meeting with House Republicans to lay out the advantages of the proposed deal.
The House Rules Committee is scheduled to set up rules for debate on the measure in a meeting Monday afternoon, with a final vote expected in the early evening.
Congressional leaders of either party have in the past been reluctant to bring any measure they favor up for a vote unless they are confident they have the votes to pass it.
Boehner abruptly yanked an earlier debt-and-deficit proposal from the floor just hours before a scheduled vote after indications showed many Republicans planned to vote against it.
For that measure, Democrats were unanimously opposed to Boehner's plan, leaving him without the 216 votes needed for passage.
In this case, lobbying by the White House and Democratic Congressional leaders seems likely to bring a number of House Democratic votes in favor of the deal.
Some seasoned Congressional observers are predicting that Boehner will retain the majority of House GOP votes, roughly 170, with perhaps as many as 65 Democrats supplying the votes to put the measure over the top.
Other reports have estimated that only 11 Republican Senators are planning to oppose the deal, which could mean that the measure clears the Senate with more than 70 votes, depending on how many Democrats ultimately vote against it.
The deal will set out discretionary spending cuts of roughly $1 trillion over the next 10 years while setting up a bipartisan Congressional committee of members of both the House and the Senate to determine a path for cutting a further $1.5 trillion.
Should the committee fail to reach an agreement or should Congress fail to enact the plan, the proposal would trigger automatic spending cuts, split between domestic spending and defense spending.
Critically for Democrats, the "trigger" cuts would not fall on beneficiaries of Social Security or Medicare, while Republicans will see no automatic tax increases.
With criticism of the deal coming from both the Left and Right, the White House dispatched Vice President Joe Biden, who was reportedly key to striking a deal with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in an effort to shore up Democratic support for the deal.
Biden met first with Senate Democrats and then attended the House Democratic Caucus meeting.
The timelines for votes in both House and Senate are still subject to change, though Reid has said he also hopes to bring the bill up for a vote on Monday.
That would require that none of the Senators who have expressed objections to the bill block a request for unanimous consent to hold a vote, a prospect that has proved troublesome for Reid to achieve in the past.
However, the looming specter of potential default Tuesday may persuade those opposed to the deal to still allow a vote.
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