The Hill News

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Friday that the Republican Party needs to show more unison in order to reach a deficit deal.

Graham said Republicans as a party need a game plan going forward, and that they could use the Treasury Department’s Aug. 2 deadline to put “pressure” on the president in order to pass a balanced-budget amendment before agreeing to raise the debt ceiling.

“As Republicans, we should tell the country we’ve already agreed to raise the debt ceiling and here’s the way it should be done,” Graham said. “And just be insistent that the Democrat party put another plan up and have more votes to get people on the record.”

It doesn’t surprise him that President Obama threatened to veto the Cut, Cap and Balance Act, Graham said. “What surprises me is that the Republican party has not united around it the way it should.”

Republicans have argued about the best approach to solving the budget defic! it, with some maintaining the debt ceiling should not be raised at all and others pushing for a variety of conditions including defunding the healthcare bill.

One approach, the "cut, cap and blance" bill, conditioned raising the debt ceiling on passing a balanced-budget amendment and implementing spending cuts and annual spending caps. The bill passed the House Tuesday evening 234-190 but was defeated in the Senate 51-46 Friday morning along strict party lines.

“Today was a very bad day for the Senate,” Graham told conservative Michael Medved on his radio show Friday. Graham pointed not to the fact that the bill was voted down but at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (D-Nev.) decision to stop debate without allowing anyone to offer amendments on the bill.

Graham said he didn’t understand why the Senate didn’t take more time with the bill. “What is worthy of our time?” he asked. “This has been the most unproductive session I h! ave seen since I was elected in 1995.”

Graham sai! d he tho ught that “at the end of the day, the American people would cheer both parties if we passed a balanced-budget amendment.”