In the House, Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) took a hard line on what it would take to pass the extension in his chamber; among the GOP’s possible demands are exemptions from Obama’s health-care law and approval for the building of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
For now, House GOP aides said, Boehner’s leadership team is content to see how the talks play out in the Senate before they consider other options.
Senate Democrats questioned whether Republicans were leading them to a negotiating dead end in which no one could find reductions that would be agreeable to enough Democrats and still win approval from House and Senate Republicans. “We don’t want a Mexican standoff where we put in our pay-for and they put in their pay-for,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters after the vote.
Democrats would instead like to get approval of the three-month extension for the unemployment benefits and use the intervening time to negotiate offsetting savings for a longer-term extension of the insurance program. But that risks losing votes from key Republicans.
“I don’t buy that argument,” Coats said, suggesting that the 13 previous extensions to the program were too many. He said he will support a new extension only if there are offsetting cuts.