I really think Speaker Boehner’s best move is just to resign. He’s making a fool of himself. It can’t be worth it. His latest plan is so stupid that no one can even figure out why he’s attempting it. Even his own caucus is mystified. He’s whipping the crap out of his caucus to vote for tax hikes on millionaires in return for nothing because the bill will be dead the moment it is passed. And he thinks this will prove a point about what? The Democrats are desperate to make the Republicans break their anti-tax pledge, and Boehner is forcing his members to do it for free?
It might make sense if it got him one inch further towards some plausible goal, but it doesn’t. He’s an idiot.
I agree, its time for Boehner to “spend more time with his family.”
Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, and Johnnie Walker?
I thought Orange Julius was a Scotch guy. Is he a single malt or blended malt guy?
In light of the recent election don’t forget Jose Cuervo.
I don’t get this attitude. He’s replaced by Cantor. Boehner seems somewhat sane just terrified of his caucus. Cantor IS one of the caucus.
I don’t see how that changes things really. Maybe it makes the optics worse for the GOP. Or maybe not.
Boehner realizes, even if his caucus doesn’t, that if the GOP doesn’t do something to prevent taxes going up on everyone, the GOP is dead. So he has decided to try to limit the damage of the tax increases by limiting the number of people it falls on. Plus, there is a part of him that is saying, “Look we went against the pledge despite the political risk to show we are serious. But those nasty Dems shot it down, so the reason taxes go up for everyone is them not us.”
It won’t work, but when you get desparate, you grasp for straws hoping you grab enough to keep you afloat.
That’s exactly how the MSM and financial media this morning, that the Republicans are reasonably willing to tax the rich, but Obama is the reason that the tax cuts will fall on everyone since he won’t take this “reasonable” offer. Plan B does seem reasonable if not ideal to me given that the media are not reporting any spending cuts with it. Downstream, there is a posting that huge SS cuts are attached. How “responsible” of the MSM not to mention that.
But with the collusion of the press, killing Plan B will be panned as unreasonable reckless behavior by the Democrats. Remember, they (media) are all very high income people too.
I’m also not not sure that the Senate will kill Plan B. Bernie Sanders has pledged to filibuster any cut in SS or Medicare, but McConnell can probably find enough Lieberdems to join the GOP in overriding the filibuster. What does he need? Only five or six?
Here’s a link that gives the lie to the media omission of mention of spending cuts.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/20/1172408/-Boehner-s-Plan-B-sweetened-with-GOP-wish-list-for-
screwing-poor-people?showAll=yes
Cutting funding of the exchanges is absolutely sure to get an Obama veto, so why is it there? It’s hard not to think that it is there to ensure an Obama veto, so that Obama can be blamed for everything.
I’m now impressed by Boehner’s legislating skeelz, either, but it’s not like the guy has a lot of good options here.
He could pull down seven figures as a lobbyist and probably wouldn’t have much less influence. Then again, he wouldn’t have much less influence if he were selling pencils on the street corner.
Lol, good point.
I was talking about good options in this debt ceiling standoff.
Or fiscal cliff, or whatever we’re calling it now.
Er, “not impressed,” that is.
But at least it keeps his tanning time to a minimum.
I’ll have to look more closely at plan B, but on the face it looks like an offer not made in good faith that the Dems should accept. It breaks the pledge and targets the truly rich, it involves no entitlement cuts, it gives serious defense cuts with Republican fingerprints, it lessens the contractionary impact of the cliff by keeping the tax cuts for all who will actually spend the money. Isn’t all this all is worth the payroll tax cut?
No, the reporting Booman links to here makes it clear that the Orange Speaker changed last night and is now defending against any Defense Department cuts at all, and takes what had been a $500 billion Defense cut in Boehner’s original Plan B proposal and requires that those $500 billion be added to the cuts in other discretionary probrams.
In other words, it’s hard to imagine this getting any Democratic votes at all, and indeed the Speaker is whipping his caucus to vote on tax hikes for milionnaires with no reward at all.
A curious question: what is Norquist’s motivation to sign off on Boehner’s plan here? I don’t see how they expect to win the end game with this strategy, so why would Grover want to place daylight between his Americans for Tax Reform and the Club for Growth and the Heritage Foundation right now? The last two oppose Plan B.
OK, didn’t realize Boehner had moved the goal posts. Too bad.
O/T
Bingo
Selling guns is good business, particularly when you get the permanent bailout of having no liability for the unpleasant externalities of your particular consumer goods industry (Just like our friends in the finance industry. Hey what do you know, we’re run by Mitt Romney’s friends in private capital!). That’s right, they write in legal amnesties just for you. And selling guns does a wonderful job to create a divided and self-fearing public ready to passively accept the permanent emergency of disaster capitalism (“Fix the Debt”). Which is why the atavistic totemization of unabridged gun rights is the central node of zombiefied 1%ism, the tea party patriot with his frontier scatter gun and his no country for old and unarmed men.
These men are actively defining “freedom” as
It looks to me like in their private discussions, President Obama exercised a classic “agitation” with Boehner, and challenged him to prove that he was actually the leader of his caucus and could get them to vote for deal because he asked them too. The only thing that makes sense is that it is a kind of no-confidence vote, with President Obama being convinced or not of any confidence to put in Boehner as credible counter-party with which to cut such an important deal.
A hilariously apt metaphorical description of the current circumstance in the House GOP: Boehner has the role of Abbas’ leadership of Fatah and the Tea Party Caucus he is dealing with are in the role of Hamas.
The Tea Party does wish to deny the current American government’s right to exist, are behaving as economic terrorists, and Abbas is not a reliable negotiating partner with Israel since he lacks Palestinian control, so the metaphor seems apt to me in those places.
I don’t see the Democrats and Obama following the current Israeli role in this metaphor, though.
What a mess. Just heard on C-Span that GOP leaders like Tom Price are saying whether or not they are undecided on their vote for Boehner’s new Plan B. Keep in mind that the rule to reconsider just scraped by, barely. It’s getting a little late for your leadership to be considering whether they will follow their own Leader, isn’t it? They’ll be voting on his Bill in about an hour.
I can only imagine the threats which are being levied all around right now. Astonishingly poor leadership.
Hoo Boy. At what point does someone start pointing out that time has run out for this little game of made-up deadlines? It’s December 20, the senate is en route to Hawaii to pay tribute to its most senior member, and won’t return until after Christmas–say the 27th. There’s no Grand Bargain agreement, and now Boner is scheduling some political game playin’ about being willin’ to raise taxes on people makin’ over a million, solely to pimp Obama for his “no more tax cuts for millionaires!” campaign line. Which the senate hasn’t discussed or passed. For the deeply unserious Repub joke party, par for the course.
The only course that can possibly be undertaken now, if something needs to be done by the end of December, with the senate having never even been involved in the mano-a-mano Obama/Boner show, is for the House to pass the already passed senate tax bill. It’s the only rational “plan”—A, B or C.
How can anything else possibly be accomplished in the available time, especially considering that we are talking about Boner and his Boneheads? DC really thinks they’re going to negotiate and cram through some all-encompassing Grand Bargain during Dec 28-31st? How? Leave aside the “Why?”….
Perhaps Boehner should just openly denounce the Tea Party caucus as “Republicans in name only”. And then resign, so someone else will have to deal with the fallout.
And….Boehner passes the sequester alternative with 215-209 vote with 21 R’s voting No. For them, this was the easy piece of Plan B.
And now the GOP leadership is huddling about the tax cut alternative. On which newly appointed but not seated in the Senate, Senator (currently Rep.) Tim Scott of SC says he is “undecided”.
Sounds like several hours of threats didn’t bring enough of the caucus around.
Boehner has quit. He has walked away from the President and has taken his ball home. Dow futures are now down 200 points and slowly tanking further.
Be still my beating heart. When I read that I thought you meant it literally, not figuratively. Then I got to sentence two.
Sell on the rumor, buy on the news.