By CARL HULSE/New York Times
WASHINGTON — The federal budget fight reached new heights of uncertainty Thursday night as the House Republican leadership abruptly put off a vote on its proposal to raise the debt ceiling to avert a government default.
Republican lawmakers who opposed the plan were summoned to the speaker’s office for a new round of lobbying by top House members. As he left the office, one of those called in for an arm-twisting, Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, said he remained “a bloody beaten-down no.”
The postponement threw the endgame of the debt-limit clash into confusion. The White House and Senate Democratic leaders had been waiting for the House to act before making their next move with an eye on the Tuesday deadline set by the Treasury Department for raising the debt ceiling or facing the possibility that the government would not be able to meet all its financial obligations.
Republicans had expressed confidence throughout the day that they would round up enough recalcitrant conservatives to pass their plan, but they obviously miscalculated.
Shortly before 6 p.m., near the end of a two-hour debate on the plan, Republicans halted the proceedings, and Democrats claimed that Speaker John A. Boehner was still short of the votes he needed.
At 6:50 p.m., the leaders stopped all business on the floor, where the House had worked through a list of post offices to be renamed, and called a recess. The move left unclear when work might resume on the measure that would provide a $900 billion increase in the federal debt limit in exchange for slightly more than that in spending cuts. A second increase of $1.6 trillion in 2012 would be tied to the ability of a new special committee to produce a proposal to save an additional $1.8 trillion.
As the House remained dark, Republican leaders scurried from office to office, meeting with members and trying to find a way to press forward with the vote.
Failure to pass the measure would represent an epic defeat for Mr. Boehner, the first-year speaker who has invested significant political capital in trying to get his fractious majority behind the legislation, which had the strong support of the entire leadership team.
Though they knew the vote was going to be close given the philosophical objections of many House Republicans to an increase in federal borrowing power, Republicans earlier Thursday had made it clear that they expected to pass the legislation in an effort to force the Democratic-led Senate into accepting it.
“When the House takes action today, the United States Senate will have no more excuses for inaction,” Mr. Boehner said Thursday afternoon, just before the debate began.
But with House Democrats offering no votes, even from the party’s fiscal conservatives, Republicans evidently remained shy of the total needed for passage, and Mr. Boehner engaged in some very public arm-twisting as he pulled members off the floor into a nearby office.
Republicans who met with the speaker, in his frantic search for votes, included Mo Brooks of Alabama, Jeff Flake and Trent Franks of Arizona, and two freshmen from Illinois, Randy Hultgren and Joe Walsh.
Asked when the vote would occur, Mr. Walsh said: “We don’t know yet. It’s up in the air.” For the moment, he said, he was still a no vote.
News of the prospect that the vote could be put off began circulating as Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader and former House speaker, was making her party’s closing argument against the plan on the floor.
Representative Steven C. LaTourette, an Ohio Republican who was serving as the presiding officer, announced that the House was going to turn to other legislative business — naming post offices — when she concluded.
The delay caught Senate Democrats off guard. Harry Reid, the majority leader, had said earlier Thursday that once the House approved its plan, he intended to immediately set it aside and move ahead with his proposal for deeper spending cuts and a longer extension in the debt limit, which would ultimately be thrown back to the House.
The White House was taken by surprise by the postponement as well, having shared the expectation that Mr. Boehner had the Republican votes to pass his measure. Administration officials had no immediate reaction; any satisfaction at the public show of Republican disarray over a bill that Mr. Obama had threatened to veto was offset by concern that additional delays only raised the chances of missing the deadline to increase the debt limit.
All day, the White House was on the sidelines, awaiting the outcome of the expected House and Senate votes before it could engage Senate Republicans in talks on a compromise that could pass in the Senate and be sent to the House, upping the pressure on House Republicans to fall in line.
After earlier talks, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who served nearly four decades in the Senate and acts as the White House point person for dealing with the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, was not in touch with Mr. McConnell on Thursday, aides to both men said. They said Mr. McConnell had made it clear that he did not want to engage until the House had voted on Mr. Boehner’s bill.
Mr. Obama has said he wants an increase in the debt limit through 2012 to avoid a repeat months from now of “this kind of circus,” as his press secretary, Jay Carney, said Thursday.
Mr. Carney echoed Mr. Obama’s argument that such timing could make an essential extension of the government’s borrowing authority hostage to election-year partisanship. He added, “Lift the cloud that’s hanging over our economy.”
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