House Puts Off Debt Vote as Press by Boehner Fails

Short of support from their conservative members, House Republican leaders on Thursday abruptly put off a vote on their proposal to raise the debt ceiling and cut government spending, throwing last-ditch efforts to avert a government default next week into disarray.

Just minutes from a roll call vote on the plan pushed by Speaker John A. Boehner, Republicans stunned the House by interrupting the debate and turning to routine matters while Mr. Boehner and his lieutenants tried to pressure reluctant conservatives into backing their plan. The House then went into a recess and shortly before 11 p.m., the leadership announced that no vote would be held Thursday.

It was unclear if the leadership intended to reconfigure the measure and try again Friday, but senior lawmakers were taking procedural steps to do so.

The surprise postponement threw the endgame of the debt-limit clash into confusion and raised concerns among some on Capitol Hill that the government was lurching toward a default. 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.

Officials and aides said opponents had multiple misgivings about the measure, which Senate Democrats had already said they would reject as soon as it reached the Senate desk. The legislation 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.

Failure to pass the measure would represent a significant 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. It could also bolster Senate Democrats in their push to raise the debt ceiling by enough to take the Treasury Department through 2012.

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 had made it clear earlier Thursday 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 shortly before 6 p.m., near the end of a two-hour debate on the plan, Republicans halted the proceedings, and Democrats claimed that Mr. 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. As the House remained dark, Republican leaders scurried from office to office, meeting with rebellious members and trying to find a way to press forward with the vote. They eventually surrendered and put off the vote for the night.

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.

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. After the night of uncertainty, Ms. Pelosi said she hoped the struggle would make House Republicans more willing to give ground.