Brian Beutler is too polite. He accurately describes Speaker Boehner’s harebrained idea for passing an extension of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits, but he treats it too seriously. The bottom line is that Boehner doesn’t have the votes in his own caucus to pass the extensions, so he’s trying to sweeten the pot by including all kinds of things that Democrats hate. Chief among these is a provision that would force the administration to make a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline within 60 days. Some Democrats support the pipeline, but that doesn’t mean they will be able to ignore all the other garbage in the bill and give it their support. And, even if they did, or even if Boehner brought along enough of his own caucus that he didn’t need Democratic votes, he’d still have to strip almost all the crap out to get the Senate to sign off on it in the conference committee. And once everything is pretty much stripped out, then he’s back to his original problem, which is that his own members don’t support the extensions.
Boehner’s problem is that he doesn’t want to get blamed for giving every worker in the country a thousand dollar tax hike while fighting tooth and nail to preserve tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. But the only way to avoid that problem is to work with Pelosi and to stop trying to win over his nutty right flank.
It also looks like Congress might serve up a Defense Appropriations Bill that the president will veto because of its detainee provisions. Boehner probably has enough, or close to enough, votes to override the president’s veto, but the Senate probably would fall short. If the president vetoes the Defense bill, it could be a pretty lousy (and short) winter vacation for Congress. Especially considering that Congress is struggling to pass its Omnibus bill to avoid another government shutdown. They have to have that put together by tonight or they won’t be able to go home on Friday (without violating their own House rules for posting a bill 72 hours before a vote).
All in all, it’s a complete nightmare for Speaker Boehner. He’ll still probably get more than he deserves, which is nothing. But he’s not the most competent man, and he has a lot on his plate right now, none of which will make him popular.
You wonder what his motivation is. He’s obviously not a fanatic, just a country club fellow who likes the feel of power. The job has to have stopped being fun for him after the first few days and I doubt he has any sense of public service driving him. Maybe he’s just trying to get through one Congressional session without a Cantor-led putsch, then plans to retire in 2013 to some wingnut sinecure in Dayton.
As for his bottle and emotional problems, I honestly just pity the man. I hope he’s in the Congressional AA program.
Rachel Maddow is of the opinion that he’s just not very good at his job.
She might be onto something.
Well, I guess to me it depends on how you define his job. If his job is just to be Speaker of the House, compared to previous Speakers or even just THE previous Speaker, yeah he’s pretty bad. But if his job is defined as coercing an unruly bunch of idiots and fanatics into keeping the Congress functioning, then it seems to me he’s done ok. I mean, the Congress is nowhere near “functional,” but it hasn’t completely crapped out yet. The government hasn’t shutdown, yet. The debt ceiling got raised, albeit only after a disastrous turn of events. We haven’t had a straight up Constitutional crisis. The House hasn’t impeached Obama.
I mean, those are damn low standards. But Boehner has managed to meet them, and I doubt Speaker Cantor, Speaking Hensarling, or Speaker King would’ve done much better. In fact they’d probably all do worse, with even more disastrous consequences for the country.
I suspect Boehner wanted the office of Speaker, not the job. He’s in hell, but he’ll never accept the humiliation of quitting.
Same as G.W. Bush and the presidency.
Boehner is not good at his job. He is unable to write legislation that can pass both houses which the president will sign.
Someone should read this month’s Rolling Stone article on the XL pipeline on the Floor in front of the C-Span cameras and see if there’s even one vote for it after that.
Heres the link.