GOP may use debt ceiling to force Harry Reid to pass budget

There are no specific proposals yet, but under this scenario Republicans would insist on a debt ceiling agreement that includes (among other things) a requirement that Congress pass a budget by a specific date. If that doesn’t happen, there would be some sort of enforcement mechanism, perhaps an arrangement whereby the debt ceiling was lowered, or one in which Congress would have to muster a supermajority to raise it again…

House GOP sources favor the idea — it has “great merit and appeal,” said one — but they stress it is still in the early discussion stage. On the other hand, Speaker John Boehner seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Sessions in a recent conversation with the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore, who wrote that Boehner “will insist that Harry Reid and Senate Democrats pass a budget — something they haven’t done in nearly four years — before proceeding.”…

As Sessions sees it, Reid’s budget gambit is the result of a long-term plan. “It’s not a failure of leadership,” Sessions said. “This is part of the president’s political tactics. There’s no doubt in my mind that the White House and the Senate leadership calculated that the lumps they would take for not producing a budget were preferable to actually exposing their financial plan for the future.”