“Boehner Might Be A Pragmatist, But He’s No Moderate”: The Budget Deal Has Passed, But Don’t Hold Your Breath For Bipartisanship
For the first time in months, Washington seems…optimistic. Not only did House Republicans pass the budget deal brokered by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan and his counterpart in the Senate, Senator Patty Murray, but Speaker John Boehner made news with a small Howard Beale moment:
“Frankly I think they’re misleading their followers. I think they’re pushing our members in places where they want to be. And frankly I just think they’ve lost all credibility,” he told reporters at his weekly press conference Thursday. “There comes a point when people step over the line. When you criticize something and you have no idea what you’re criticizing, it undermines your credibility.” […]
“You know, they pushed us into this fight to defund Obamacare and shut down the government,” he said. “It wasn’t exactly the strategy I had in mind. But if you recall, the day before the government re-opened, one of the people at one of these groups stood up and said, ‘well we never really thought it would work.’ Are you kidding me?”
Asked if he thinks the groups should “stand down,” Boehner said, “I don’t care what they do.”
This looks like the establishment backlash we expected during the shutdown fight, or—as Molly Ball put it for The Atlantic—“House leaders stopped trying to get along with the enforcers of an impossible conservative standard and started fighting back.”
Now, the speculation is that, perhaps, Boehner is prepared to buck Tea Party Republicans on other issues. Immigration activists, for example, are hopeful that this development could change the calculus for reform, and give Boehner the room he needs to pass a bill with votes from pragmatic Republicans—who have an agenda they want to accomplish—and Democrats. Indeed, there’s the potential for a whole rush of activity around issues where Democrats and Republicans can come to narrow agreement, from an extension of unemployment insurance to the Employee Non-Discrimination Act.
The problem is that, aside from this budget deal, it doesn’t look like Boehner has broken from conservatives on much at all. In that same press conference, for instance, he repeated conservative boilerplate on repealing the Affordable Care Act. And afterwards he went to the House floor and blocked a vote on extending emergency unemployment benefits. Likewise, there’s no real indication that he’s changed his mind on the EDNA or unemployment insurance. The House Speaker might be a pragmatist, but he isn’t a moderate.
Earlier this year, Boehner bucked conservatives by violating the “Hastert rule”—the faux requirement that all legislation passed by the House have support by a majority of the majority—to pass a deal on the fiscal cliff, authorize aid for Hurricane Sandy, and renew the Violence Against Women Act. The prediction was that this could be the new normal, and that Boehner could restore a modicum of sanity to the House by refusing to rely on Republican votes for legislation.
What followed, instead, was a year of inaction, culminating in a government shutdown and a stand-off over the fiscal cliff.
All of this is to say that we shouldn’t hold our breath about Boehner and his “new” approach. The Ryan-Murray deal was a necessity: Not only does it preclude Tea Party conservatives from forcing another shutdown, but it preserves most of the sequester and hands Republicans a solid victory.
As for the other agenda items? Most Republicans don’t want them and there’s no reason for Boehner to go against the tide.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The Daily Beast, December 13, 2013
“A Phony Civil War”: Nobody Here But Us Conservatives
Speaker John Boehner’s serial criticisms (yesterday in an NBC interview, today in a press conference) of conservative “outside groups” and their harassment of his own self and of House Republicans who do his bidding is getting massive media attention at the moment. Any minute now someone in the MSM is going to go over the brink and toast the Ohioan as the bravest man in American politics, a veritable colossus of strength and wisdom.
That’s all well and good; best I can tell Boehner got through both outbursts without weeping, and it is nice to see him not crawling on his belly like a reptile when it comes to Heritage Action and other right-wing bully boys. You kinda get the feeling, moreover, that Boehner was behind the firing of Republican Study Committee staff director Paul Teller, which has people in the “outside” groups and the allied blogospheric precincts freaking out.
But the Teller brouhaha is a reminder that this whole “war” between Boehner and “the groups” is pretty much inside baseball, and about Boehner’s role as Republican tactician rather than any deep matter of ideology or principle. And anyone who wants to lionize Boehner as some sort of “moderate” or even “pragmatist” free of ideological fervor should heed his own words in today’s press conference:
Asked if he was officially saying “no” to the tea party, Boehner emphasized the deficit reduction achieved under the budget deal and said there was no reason to oppose it.
“I came here to cut the size of government,” he said. “That’s exactly what this bill does, and why conservatives wouldn’t vote for this or criticize the bill is beyond any recognition I could come up with.”
Boehner also defended his own commitment to conservative principles, which has repeatedly come under fire. This criticism has at times threatened his speakership when he has attempted to negotiate with President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats.
“I say what I mean and I mean what I say,” he said. “I’m as conservative as anybody around this place.”
Can you imagine Harry Reid, who occasionally gets criticized by the left, saying “I’m as liberal as anybody around this place”? No, you can’t.
So even this “act of war” between Boehner and “the groups” needs to be understood for what it is: an argument over strategy and tactics and operational control rather than goals and ideology. So progressives shouldn’t go too far in celebrating another battle in what I think is a phony “civil war,” or in exaggerating its effects.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 12, 2013
“You Need This Mr. Speaker”: How To Make John Boehner Cave On Immigration
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) generally adheres to the unwritten Republican rule that bars him from allowing votes on bills opposed by a majority of Republicans, even if they would win a majority of the full House.
But he’s caved four times this year, allowing big bills to pass with mainly Democratic support. They include repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans; providing Hurricane Sandy relief; expanding the Violence Against Women act to better cover immigrants, Native Americans, and LGBT survivors of abuse; and this week’s bill raising the debt limit and reopening the federal government.
Many presume the Republican House is a black hole sucking President Obama’s second-term agenda into oblivion. But the list of Boehner’s past retreats offers a glimmer of hope, especially to advocates of immigration reform. Though it has languished in the House, an immigration overhaul passed with bipartisan support in the Senate, and was given a fresh push by Obama in the aftermath of the debt limit deal.
The big mystery that immigration advocates need to figure out: What makes Boehner cave? Is there a common thread? Is there a sequence of buttons you can push that forces Boehner to relent?
Two of this year’s caves happened when Boehner was backed up against hard deadlines: The Jan. 1 fiscal cliff and the Oct. 17 debt limit. Failure to concede meant immediate disaster. Reject the bipartisan compromise on rolling back the Bush tax cuts, get blamed for jacking up taxes on every taxpayer. Reject the Senate’s three-month suspension of the debt limit, get blamed for sparking a global depression. Boehner held out until the absolute last minute both times, but he was not willing to risk blowing the deadline.
A third involved the response to an emergency: Hurricane Sandy. Conservative groups were determined to block disaster relief because — as with other federal disaster responses — the $51 billion legislative aid package did not include offsetting spending cuts. Lacking Republican votes, Boehner briefly withdrew the bill from consideration, unleashing fury from New York and New Jersey Republicans, including Gov. Chris Christie. While there wasn’t a hard deadline to meet, disaster relief was a time-sensitive matter, and the pressure from Christie and his allies was unrelenting. Two weeks after pulling the bill, Boehner put it on the floor, allowing it to pass over the objections of 179 Republicans.
The fourth cave occurred in order to further reform and expand a government program: The Violence Against Women Act. The prior version of the law had been expired for over a year, as conservatives in the House resisted the Senate bill in the run-up to the 2012 election. But after Mitt Romney suffered an 18-point gender gap in his loss to Obama, and after the new Senate passed its version again with a strong bipartisan vote, Boehner was unwilling to resist any longer. Two weeks later, the House passed the Senate bill with 138 Republicans opposed.
Unfortunately for immigration advocates, there is no prospect of widespread pain if reform isn’t passed. There is no immediate emergency, nor threat of economic collapse.
But there is a deadline of sorts: The 2014 midterm elections.
If we’ve learned anything about Boehner this month, it’s that he’s a party man to the bone. He dragged out the shutdown and debt limit drama for weeks, without gaining a single concession, simply so his most unruly and revolutionary-minded members would believe he fought the good fight and stay in the Republican family. What he won is party unity, at least for the time being.
What Boehner lost for his Republicans is national respectability. Republican Party approval hit a record low in both the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll and Gallup poll.
Here’s where immigration advocates have a window of opportunity to appeal to Boehner’s party pragmatism. Their pitch: The best way to put this disaster behind them is for Republicans to score a big political victory. You need this.
A year after the Republican brand was so bloodied that the Republican National Committee had to commission a formal “autopsy,” party approval is the worst it has ever been. You’ve wasted a year. Now is the time to do something that some voters will actually like.
There’s reason to hope he could be swayed. In each of the four cases in which he allowed Democrats to carry the day, he put the short-term political needs of the Republican Party over the ideological demands of right-wing activists.
Boehner will have to do another round of kabuki. He can’t simply swallow the Senate bill in a day. There will have to be a House version that falls short of activists’ expectations, followed by tense House-Senate negotiations. Probably like in the most formulaic of movies, and like the fiscal cliff and debt limit deals, there will have to be an “all-is-lost moment” right before we get to the glorious ending. Boehner will need to given the room to do all this again.
But he won’t do it without a push. A real good push.
By: Bill Scher, The Week, October 18, 2013
“Speaker In Name Only”: Why John Boehner’s Failures Don’t Affect His Job Security
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has struggled since grabbing the gavel 33 months ago, but the last few weeks have been especially brutal. He didn’t want a government shutdown, but his own members rejected his advice. Boehner didn’t want a debt-ceiling crisis, either, but his members balked at following his lead on this, too.
Even last night, after the Speaker endorsed a bipartisan resolution to the crisis his own caucus created, most House Republicans rejected the plan Boehner grudgingly supported.
Indeed, just 24 hours ago, National Review’s Robert Costa had breakfast with some House Republican lawmakers who said they’re “losing faith in their leadership.”
So how much trouble is Boehner really in? Not as much as common sense might suggest.
House conservatives said Wednesday that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is in no danger of losing his post, despite presiding over a Republican defeat in the fight over government funding and the debt ceiling.
“I don’t think Speaker Boehner has anything to worry about right now,” said Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho), a conservative who refused to vote for Boehner in January.
When Boehner hosted a caucus meeting yesterday, breaking the news that the House would have to pass the Senate’s bipartisan compromise, he received a standing ovation – even though most House Republicans opposed and rejected the plan.
Roll Call added, “GOP lawmakers from across the conference say there are no coup attempts in the works and few complaints over the job Boehner did on the shutdown and debt limit fights.”
How is this possible? As implausible as this may seem, congressional Republicans are pointing a lot of fingers this morning, but none of them are pointed at the Speaker. GOP pragmatists are blaming Tea Partiers; Tea Partiers are blaming pragmatists; and they’re both blaming the media. Republicans are furious with President Obama for not caving the way they expected him to, and are even angrier with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for making them look bad.
But Boehner, at least for the time being, is in the clear. He took orders from his followers, so for now, they’re satisfied.
Stepping back, though, the bigger picture offers a good-news/bad-news dynamic for the embattled, accomplishment-free Speaker. The good news is, Boehner’s GOP conference still likes him and sees no need to replace him.
The bad news is his members intend to keep ignoring his wishes and rejecting his advice.
In other words, Boehner is still the Speaker. He’s also still the Speaker In Name Only.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 17, 2013
“John Boehner’s Last Stand”: His Hostage Taking Tactics Remain As Dangerous As Ever
The nature of Speaker John Boehner’s final battle with the White House on the budget crisis is now clear: It doesn’t matter what House Republicans win in exchange for raising the debt ceiling and re-opening government, as long as they win something.
Gone is the big talk about “defunding Obamacare.” Gone are the demands for delaying the health law, or delaying the individual mandate, or delaying the medical device tax. The final stand, according to the latest reports, is simply this: remove the health insurance subsidies for members of Congress, some executive branch officials, and some of their staffs. (Those staff members are furious about the potential cut to their incomes, and many have threatened to quit.)
If that seems a paltry prize to win for causing this destructive, embarrassing crisis, that’s because it is. But this fight really has nothing to do with the subsidies. It’s all about not walking away empty handed, about Mr. Boehner persuading his Republican members that they forced President Obama to give something up in exchange for not wreaking havoc on the economy.
And that’s precisely why the president can’t agree to it, even though the impact (for all but Congressional staffers) would be minimal.
For the sake of the rest of his presidency, and the presidents to come, he has to make it clear that no chamber of Congress can back the White House into a corner by threatening the full faith and credit of the United States. Even a small concession, like ending the Congressional subsidies, would betray that principle.
Of course that position is irreconcilable with the hard-right faction of the House that sees the debt ceiling as the only leverage that can turn them into a real political force. But the unprecedented use of that leverage has to be stopped here, even at a terrible cost, because the long-term cost would be so much worse.
Once Senate Republicans and Democrats began cobbling together their own plan, Mr. Boehner could have ended the crisis by standing back and letting momentum for the Senate plan build. Instead, he chose to sabotage it, because he and the Tea Party faction clearly want to use the power of hostage-taking again.
One of the provisions in the House’s latest plan is a demand that the Treasury not use any special measures to prevent default the next time the debt hits the ceiling — a provision, in other words, that would make default an even more likely possibility the next time than it will be on Thursday, when the Treasury runs out of borrowing authority. (The actual default will probably occur later this month.)
Mr. Boehner may hope that the diminished nature of his final demand about Congressional subsidies will embarrass Democrats into approving it, but his tactics are as dangerous as ever.
By: David Firestone, Editor’s Blog, The New York Times, October 15, 2013
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 