The Speaker of the House is still really bad at his job.
“The good news is we have a winning message. The bad news is that in order for that message to mean anything, we have to back it up with action.” –John Boehner, in a closed-door meeting with his caucus this morning.
The bad news for Republicans in the House of Representatives is that they actually have to do something. You know, like fund the surface transportation in this country before funding runs out at the end of the month. But Boehner can’t get that done, so he’s left begging and pleading with his own members to be reasonable.
Boehner bluntly warned lawmakers that if the House does not pass its own bill, it will be stuck with a two-year, $109 billion Senate bill, or “something that looks just like it,” according to a source in the room.
“You don’t like that? I don’t like it either. Why would any of us like it?” the Speaker told his members. “It means punting on the opportunity to pass an infrastructure bill that bears our stamp. It means giving up on the opportunity to make sure a bill is enacted that is responsibly paid for, that has full-scale reforms in it and most importantly, that is linked to increased production of American energy.
“But right now, it’s the plan.”
Boehner urged his caucus to show unity.
“The American people entrusted us with the majority in the House. What we do with it us up to us,” he said. “We can use it to take steps together, one at a time, toward the vision we share. Or we can do nothing. We can squander the time we’ve been given … allowing our internal disagreements to paralyze us.”
When he says “the time we’ve been given” he doesn’t sound like a man who anticipates holding onto the gavel after the November elections. Given his inability to snap out of his paralysis, I can hardly blame him.
“You don’t like that? I don’t like it either. Why would any of us like it?” the Speaker told his members. “It means punting on the opportunity to pass an infrastructure bill that bears our stamp.
They’re getting so much practice at punting that I expect them to show up in the Fantasy Football Draft next season.
Good one. Maybe we need to draft a punt returner.
Sounds like Orange Julius is as bad at his job as Matt Dodge was!
Ouch. Rub it in.
They always seem to punt it into the end zone. No returns are necessary. How often have you seen them put it inside the political 10 yard line? Almost never.
As upset with congress as Americans say they are in recent polls, I wonder if that dissatisfaction actually extends to the local level? I live in a Republican congressional district and from what I can tell, the local representative here still walks on water, as far as his base is concerned.
Is this atypical, or is American angst directed at those “other guys” in congress?
Yes, it’s typical.
But there are polls showing historically high levels of people saying that their own congressperson needs to go.
Do the polls give a cross-section of anti-incumbent opinion? Like what percentage are Tea Partiers, independents, or whatever.
Regardless of how the presidential election turns out, I predict that the Republicans will lose the House BIG TIME in November. Here is the basis for my prediction. Several factors..
(1) In advance of the 2010 Congressional elections corporations spent billions on negative TV videos to kill Obama’s Health Care Reform Bill. The millions of white over 55 voters voted Republican in 2010 in response to this tsunami of anti-Democratic messages in the TV ads and in the public discourse, which continued after the bill was passed into law.
(2) The unemployment picture prior to the 2010 elections scared millions of white workers who were living in the fear of possible imminent layoffs. These people felt that Obama and the Congress were spending too much time bailing out Wall Street and ignoring the astronomical unemployment all over main street. These two groups responded to situation by voting Republican in 2010.
(3) Many mainstream Republicans along with Tea Party Republicans ran on the slogan that they would “Fix things in Washington”, which appealed to all three of the above groups.
However, the House Republicans did absolutely nothing except pass bills naming Post Office buildings around the country for home town notables. Two years later and these three voting groups have personally witnessed that their emotional reactionary vote in 2010 achieved nothing. In actuality it turned out to have been a record breaking “Time Warp” lacuna for any progress by the Federal government. Therefore in the style of customary American “smart politics” it will be time to switch horses again in 2012. This change will effectively once again make John Boehner the Minority Leader in the House.
I’m doing more than hoping you are right. If you are, the immediate challange will become how to infuse some spine into the congressional Democrats. But we’ve been there before, havn’t we?