“An Obama administration official said Sunday morning that while a deal hasn’t been struck by congressional leaders and the White House progress is being made.

“Jacob Lew, White House budget director, said progress is reflected in increased activity in talks between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate…

“He said most lawmakers are on board and understand the need to raise the debt ceiling although there will be a ‘fringe that believes that playing with armageddon is a good idea but I don’t think that’s where the majority will be.'”

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“Even as President Obama and congressional leaders focus on a fallback plan to lift the nation’s debt ceiling, top Democrats and Republicans have begun to map a new way to craft the same sort of ambitious deficit-cutting plan they abandoned last week.

“As part of the deal being discussed to raise the debt ceiling, leaders on Capitol Hill are forming an especially powerful congressional committee that would be charged with drawing up a new ‘grand bargain,’ possibly by the end of the year…

“‘I didn’t get elected to punt this problem down the road another six months,’ said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). ‘We are the body, we are the commission to make these tough decisions. . . . Guys like me are not coming along. We’re not going along just to get along.’

“Rep. Allen B. West (R-Fla.) was equally blunt. ‘The quote-unquote McConnell-Reid plan is no plan. That’s the acquiescence of the responsibilities of our Congress,’ he said. ‘It’s nothing but the typical D.C. two-step, and I’m not going to be part of that.'”

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“Re-election is the farthest thing from my mind,’ said Representative Tom Reed, a freshman Republican from upstate New York. ‘Like many of my colleagues in the freshman class, I came down here to get our fiscal house in order and take care of the threat to national security that we see in the federal debt. We came here not to have long careers. We came here to do something. We don’t care about re-election.’…

“Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said many freshman Republicans — ‘to their undying credit’ — were not concerned with re-election. ‘The people who got elected in 2010 are going to go down fighting,’ said Mr. Graham, who served eight years in the House before winning a Senate seat in 2002. ‘They are not going to be persuaded by traditional politics. They could care less about 2012. They want to do what they can on their watch.’…

“Some Republicans say they do not worry much about being punished by their constituents for playing hardball with their votes on the debt limit and thus pushing the nation to the brink of default. And besides, they doubt that the consequences of a default would be as dire as Mr. Obama and many economists say.”

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“‘I haven’t firmly decided, but I am unlikely to support it at this time,’ Coburn said, of McConnell’s plan, which would allow Republicans to avoid voting to raise the debt limit by essentially ceding authority to the president on the matter…

“‘I think the McConnell plan is more of Washington not taking responsibility,’ Coburn told CBS’ Bob Schieffer. ‘It is a great political plan: it takes the pressure off all of the politicians, but allows us to pass a debt limit without making the hard choices that this country has to make.

“‘I am only going to support something that actually solves the problem,’ Coburn said. ‘And not the political problem. I don’t care about the politics anymore. If it doesn’t solve the policy problem for this country, I am not going to support it.'”

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Via Gateway Pundit.

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Via the Daily Caller.

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“The way the deal is currently structured right now, it gives the President the ability to raise the debt limit. But as I’ve said already on the problem: The debt limit is not really the problem here, the problem here is the debt.”