White House (Photo credit: Tom Lohdan)

By Jake Sherman and Burgess Everett

Warnings from the White House, Wall Street and the world economic community be damned: Debt ceiling drama is back.The rapidly approaching fight over lifting the nation’s borrowing limit won’t only pit Republicans against President Barack Obama but also pit Republicans against Republicans.

One example of the GOP tension: Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and several other Senate Republicans are hoping to strike a large-scale fiscal deal with Democrats and the White House to reform entitlements, the Tax Code, fund the government and infrastructure projects, and most important, blunt sequester cuts. They met with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough again Tuesday.

But Rep. Paul Ryan, who is taking a lead in crafting the House Republican debt plan, wants nothing to do with it.

“It doesn’t matter — we’re not going to do what they want to do,” the Wisconsin Republican told POLITICO when asked about Senate Republicans’ plan for the debt ceiling. “It really doesn’t matter what they do. It doesn’t matter what John McCain and others do on the taxes and the rest. If they want to give up taxes for the sequester, we’re not going to do that. So it doesn’t really affect us.”

Once again, Washington is waltzing toward calamity with no clear strategy. In the next six months, however, Congress and the White House will need to raise the nation’s borrowing limit to avoid a debt default and downgrade. Congressional sources say the nation will hit its borrowing limit anytime from October to the end of 2013.

via Debt ceiling drama returns – Jake Sherman and Burgess Everett – POLITICO.com.