John Boehner has proven once again that he just isn’t very good at his job. He tried to pass a bill yesterday that would provide disaster relief to the states affected by Hurricane Irene as well as keep the government from shutting down at the end of the month, and he failed miserably. Forty-eight members of his party voted against him and the bill was crushed, 195-230. The Speaker should be feeling an emotion called humiliation.
“DeLay would never have lost this vote,” noted one veteran GOP lawmaker after Wednesday’s upheaval. The Republican member was speaking of former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), known as “The Hammer” by Republicans and Democrats alike. “DeLay would never have brought this thing to the floor until he knew that he had the votes.”
What happened here is that Eric Cantor’s insistence that FEMA disaster aid be offset by slashing a loan program for fuel-efficient cars aroused the near-unanimous opposition of the Democrats. Meanwhile, Boehner’s effort to talk sense to his Tea Partiers fell on deaf ears.
Boehner had tried, unsuccessfully, to rally Republicans behind the bill earlier in the day, warning them in a closed-door conference meeting that the level of spending was likely only to increase if their legislation failed…
…The defeat was a stinging loss for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who pitched the measure to his conference as the lowest spending number they could get.
House GOP leaders retreated to the Speaker’s office after the vote to plot their next move.
The House, of course, has to negotiate with Harry Reid’s Senate, so Boehner can’t respond to this setback by moving the bill further to the right to satisfy his own caucus. He must now regroup and craft something the Democrats will feel like supporting. In the meantime, things are getting urgent.
Unless Congress passes stopgap legislation by midnight on Sept. 30, much of the government will shut down.
“Consider making the disaster relief more robust” in the next bill, said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. “Please talk to the Democrats.”
Landrieu said FEMA Director Craig Fugate told her Wednesday that the agency’s disaster relief fund may run dry Tuesday. That would mean that there’s no money to provide shelter, cash assistance or other help to victims of Irene, thousands of fires across Texas and flooding in Northeastern states.
The fiasco is threatening to delay Congress’ vacation:
“Suffice it to say there’s not going to be a shutdown,” House Minority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, told reporters after the Wednesday night vote that defeated the spending measure he supported. “I think everybody needs to relax.”
The House vote Wednesday was 195-230, with 48 Republicans joining all but a handful of minority Democrats in opposing the short-term spending plan.
Minutes later, House Republican leaders met in Speaker John Boehner’s office to consider revisions to the measure.
In a message to House members, Cantor’s office said the temporary spending plan could come up again Thursday and “members are advised that a weekend session is now possible.”
I don’t know why the Republicans tolerate Boehner’s ineptitude.
Mmm, hope Ron Paul has all his churches on speed dial to step up and fill the void. Since they’re probably doing already the most that they can do they may be a little grumpy at being asked to come up with a couple extra billion to fill in.
Obviously if Boehner can’t manage to get the votes for FEMA, there’s little chance he can move any Bill through the House.
He’s easily one of the most incompetent Speakers of all time; at the very least, the most incompetent in recent memory. He hasn’t been able to pass jack since he’s held the position. Without Pelosi, he wouldn’t have passed the debt limit deal. In some ways I wish she let him suffer one loss on that first, and save him after humiliation.
I’m guessing that sobriety would improve his performance.
I gotta be honest, I wish we’d stop hitting him over the head with his alcoholism. He should be getting help over it. It’s not something to mock :
I’m sorry, I just have little to no compassion for jackoff Republicans.
I’m sorry but the man is third in line to the presidency, and he’s routinely and obviously drunk even when carrying out his official duties. He can get help after he resigns his position.
At least when Carl Albert was Speaker, he had Tip O’Neill to round up the votes needed to pass essential legislation—regardless of Albert’s sobriety (or lack thereof) on any given day.
Boehner’s a drunken fool, but is there anybody in the Republican caucus who could bring together the corporate and tea party wing(nut)s; is there a Delay to his Hastert?
It’s definitely improved mine!
Maybe I should run a 12th Step on him and save the country!
It’s incompetence by design, so none of this is surprising.
No, it really is not. He can’t control his caucus or plan for how to navigate.
Well, is the Republican theory they if they hamstring the current President and show that Congress is incompetent, then they can pivot to the most popular of: Well, 50 states were nice but we all should go it alone, or We need one man, one vision to lead without all these distractions. I shudder at each.
Whether it’s Boehner or the Tea Party members let’s not forget these are the choices made by the Rep’s themselves. They’re almost right about how ineffective govt is…they just forgot to insert Republican into the sentence.
Yes he is. But given the fanaticism of so many of the members of the Repub. caucus, is there anything anyone could do to make them act reasonably?
I don’t get it. He’s still the Speaker. Does he really care what he passes or doesn’t pass?
Plus I think a good number of these dudes think gubmint shouldn’t do disaster relief anyway, offsets or no. Their attitude is: we should get everything we want all the time, because we’re patriotic or something. Plus the 2percenters who are bankrolling these pukes aren’t going to be bothered by some flooding. They got limos and helicopters and jets and multiple estates and what have you.
Hi Torpid,
I think Grover Cleveland is one of their heroes. Check this out.
http://www.mackinac.org/7440
Further on this: you would not believe the number of right-wing sites that shower praise on Cleveland’s veto of the Texas Seed Bill of 1887 (just google “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation”):
To me, these people lack any perspective on either the US Constitution or contemporary reality. The Constitution is not simply a bunch of words to be applied in literal, fundamentalist fashion, but a philosophy of government the interpretation of which has developed historically according to the accumulating experience of the nation. To provide some much-needed perspective on this idiocy, I recommend:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/08/disaster-relief-and-constitution.html
Well said.
I don’t know why the Republicans tolerate Boehner’s ineptitude.
And what would happen with Eric Cant as Speaker? Is he going to pass anything even minimally to the left of the nonsense that Orange Julius does?
If you can’t control your own caucus, you have to go to the Democrats for help. He tried to warn them about this but he can’t convince them. What he should have done is said, “Fine, I’m not going to try to pass this and look like a fool. I’m going to Hoyer to find the votes, because we’re not leaving FEMA broke and going on vacation.”
But, instead, he brings the bill up when he’s dozens of votes short.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
No, nor to the right either. So it won’t be any different, just a little more obvious.
“I don’t know why the Republicans tolerate Boehner’s ineptitude.”
What do you mean by “the Repubicans”? Obviously a lot of them don’t tolerate him.
One of these days Boner’s going to quaff a double of Four Roses and just say “Fuck it.” He actually would have more influence if he would not worry about his dysfunctional members (pretty much all, the ones that won’t vote for anything the Democrats remotely want, and the other ones who won’t either because they’d be primaried) and just propose stuff that would get Democratic support. Why should he support them whe they don’t support him? If the House GOP then stage a coup and replace him with Cantor, good luck with that, the effect won’t be any different from what we’re getting now.
Actually he probably won’t do that, because beyond that rugged, sociopathic, orange exterior Boner’s nothing but a snivelling toady.
Boehner is incompetent, but the Republicans are not a functional political party right now. There is something very fitting in the way of a Greek Tragedy about sending a bunch of anti-government fanatics to Congress and then watching them fail to pass legislation through a chamber they have the majority in.
If I were Boehner, I might be drunk, too.
John Boehner’s “ineptitude” stems from not knowing how to run a caucus that isn’t committed to lockstep discipline.
This is new territory for the Republicans. It’s been more than a generation since the Republican leadership had to have these skills.
I think it misses the point to attribute this to Boehner personally.
Qualities of leadership are necessary in negotiating unknown waters. Lack of same rests is Boehner’s problem.
Unfortunately.
Qualities of leadership are necessary in negotiating unknown waters. Lack of same is Boehner’s problem.
Unfortunately.
Nobody could lead the current GOP Congresscritters anywhere except off a cliff. Not even DeLay.
I wonder how many people caught the nugget that Eric Cantor – and by extension all House Republicans, or all members of Congress – cares more about his own vacation than about disrupting the lives of millions of people.