“Scratching Their Heads”: A Bad Week For John Boehner And House Republican Leadership
Speaker John Boehner is having a bad week. First, his members weren’t able to agree on a budget. For a time, it didn’t look like they would be able to agree on a budget. They would have to join the Senate Democrats in simply skipping the budget process. And now, it looks like the only way to pass a budget is to propose one that undercuts the spending levels agreed to in the debt-ceiling deal — a deal that Boehner signed onto, and a reversal that sets up an unnecessary and likely unwinnable battle with the Senate.
Then, there was the push to bring Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act” to the floor. This legislation was the House version of the Blunt Amendment, and it would have amended the Affordable Care Act to permit any health-care plan, whether religious or not, to refuse to cover birth control. More than half the House had already signed on to co-sponsor the bill. It looked like an easy slam dunk. At least, it did before the Senate defeated the Blunt amendment, and Rush Limbaugh said something dumb, and the politics of this issue turned sharply against the GOP. Now the bill looks like an ugly distraction from jobs, jobs, jobs. It’s currently on ice in the Energy and Commerce Committee.
Which brings us, of course, to the Energy and Commerce Committee, site of Boehner’s most frustrating struggle. It was months ago now that he shepherded the Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act — better known as his highway bill — through five committees. His office put muscle behind the legislation, blasting out a constant stream of press releases on its many virtues, and Boehner himself delivered a speech endorsing the bill when it came to the House floor.
But the legislation has languished. Some Republicans don’t like the spending. Others don’t like the changes to mass transit funding. Some want the ability to add earmarks. Another group doubts the highway bill is the place to expand offshore oil drilling. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood — a former Republican congressman from Illinois — told Politico it was “the worst transportation bill I’ve ever seen during 35 years of public service.”
On Wednesday, in a closed-door meeting, Boehner tried to persuade his colleagues to save the bill. “Even the Senate — the do-nothing Democratic Senate — is going to pass something,” he said. But while Boehner’s speech might have helped a little, Jake Sherman reports that “GOP lawmakers are still opposing the measure in alarmingly high numbers,” leaving “Boehner and the Republican leadership scratching their heads about what went wrong.”
They must be doing that a lot lately.
By: Ezra Klein, The Washington Post, March 8, 2012
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