US Senate rejects House budget plan

By Matt Viser and Theo Emery, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON – The US Senate this morning rejected a House-backed budget and deficit plan, leaving Congress at a tense impasse over how to solve the nation’s looming debt limit problem before the US Treasury stops paying some of its bills on Aug. 2.

The Senate, along a 51-to-46 party-line vote, used a procedural vote to dispatch with the House-passed “Cut, Cap and Balance” plan, which would cut current spending, cap future spending, and require a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget.

Senator Scott Brown, the Massachusetts Republican, supported moving forward with the measure. Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat, was one of three senators who did not vote on it.

His staff did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but he has railed against the House GOP plan previously.

“ A balanced budget requirement is something we have in Massachusetts, and I think it would be good for the entire country at a time when we are $14.3 trillion dollars in debt and it is rising every day,” Brown said in a statement after the vote. “Now both parties need to come together on a plan that will allow us to avoid default, make substantial cuts in spending, which is reasonable and bipartisan and will have a chance of being signed into law.”

“Let’s stop the negative politics and partisan bickering and get down to work,” he added. “Time is running short.”

But there were few signs, at least publicly, that any deal was imminent.

House Republicans emerged from a caucus meeting defiant, suggesting there was no deal and pouring cold water on other proposals.

US Representative Bobby Schilling, a Republican from Illinois, said one of his colleagues rose during the closed-door meeting and referred to the plan that had been crafted by the bipartisan “Gang of Six” in the Senate as the “Gang of 666” plan.

House Speaker John Boehner said during a news conference that he and Obama were “frankly not near an agreement.” They have been trying to negotiate a plan to cut roughly $3 trillion from the deficit’s growth over the next decade.

“There is no deal. There is no agreement in private,” said Boehner, growing testy at times. “I’ve talked to the White House about keeping lines of communication open. But at the end of the day, we have a spending problem. Somebody’s got to get serious about cutting spending, and our friends across the aisle aren’t at all serious.”

US Representative James McGovern, a Worcester Democrat, said he was pleased that the Senate voted down the GOP debt limit bill, and remains hopeful that another deal can be worked out. But the leaked reports about the parameters of an agreement between the White House and House Republicans are “discouraging,” he said.

“I’m not going to sell out my conscience for any deal – I want a fair deal,” he said.

Meanwhile, both House and Senate had no plans to be in session during the weekend, leaving it unclear of how, when, or whether Congress would vote to raise the nation’s debt limit before the government defaults on some of its obligations in just 11 days.