“Apocryphal Scene”: Braveheart Republicans? Or False-Hearted?
House Republicans, on the eve of Tuesday’s vote denying tax relief to 160 million Americans, huddled in a conference room in the Capitol basement for more than two hours.
Were they puzzling over how to explain to constituents why they were effectively ordering a tax increase on the middle class after fighting for much larger tax breaks for the wealthy? Were they justifying the killing of a bipartisan compromise that had the support of all but eight Senate Republicans and the tacit approval of House Speaker John Boehner?
Nope. Turns out they were talking Monday night about their favorite scenes from “Braveheart.” About 10 House Republicans went to the microphones to share their memories of the Mel Gibson film, Republican sources told my Post colleagues Paul Kane and Rosalind Helderman.
One member spoke about the apocryphal scene in which the 13th-century Scottish rebel William Wallace ordered his troops to moon the English. Another member recounted the scene in which Wallace commanded the rebels to hold their positions before raising their spears against the charging English cavalry.
This inspired the assembled lawmakers to chant: “Hold! Hold! Hold! Hold!”
Finally, toward the end of the meeting, Rep. Rob Bishop (Utah) bravely rose to tell his colleagues that he hated the film. He introduced a motion that all references to “Braveheart” be banned. His colleagues laughed and heckled. The motion was not adopted.
But Bishop was right: “Braveheart” is a conspicuously poor choice for the House GOP.
For one thing, the Republicans are, if anything, in a reverse-“Braveheart” position: In this fight, they are the nobles putting down the overtaxed peasants. For another, the Scots they are emulating were defeated and slaughtered, and Wallace was captured (possibly betrayed by his own side), then drawn and quartered.
That the House Republicans would embrace a doomed cause and its martyred leader gets at their main problem in the majority: They’d rather make a point than govern the country. And in this case, it’s not entirely clear what point they’re trying to make.
Is it making sure the tax cut is paid for? For the last decade, Republicans approved billions of dollars in tax cuts, mostly for the rich, without paying for them.
Is it because they want the tax-cut extension to be for a year rather than just two months, as the Senate approved? Then why did so many Republicans originally criticize any tax-cut extension?
In killing the Senate compromise, which passed 89 to 10, with 39 Republican votes, the House GOP resorted to a variant of the “deem and pass” resolution they derided when Democrats proposed it during the health-care fight. Reneging on their pledge to hold a vote on the Senate compromise, Braveheart Republican leaders ordered up a resolution that rejected the Senate measure without a direct vote.
Caucus chairman Jeb Hensarling (Tex.), demanding a conference between the House and Senate to resolve differences, instructed his colleagues to “go and watch ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ ” to see how “things are settled between the House and Senate.” But this ignored the fact that Senate Democrats had already compromised with Senate Republicans; Hensarling was asking them to compromise on their compromise.
House Democrats didn’t exactly distinguish themselves, either. Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.) said Republicans had imposed “martial law.” Rep. Jim McDermott (Wash.) brought a Christmas stocking and lump of coal to the floor. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) recalled a Woody Allen joke (“the food at this place is really terrible . . . and such small portions”) that she attributed to Yogi Berra.
But that didn’t hold a torch to the Republicans’ “Braveheart” performance. It wasn’t the first congressional invocation of the film (Dick Gephardt once showed up to a meeting in William Wallace attire when he was House Democratic leader), but until now it hasn’t been embraced quite so earnestly.
“Look, this is a ‘Braveheart’ moment,” Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) said on Fox News on Monday, describing the House Republicans’ instructions to Boehner. “You, Mr. Speaker, are our William Wallace. Let’s rush to the fight.”
Apparently plenty of others felt the same way. Staffers emerged from the GOP caucus meeting at 6:45 p.m. Monday to say the meeting would break up in five minutes. But the Republicans’ impromptu movie night didn’t end until 8:17 p.m., when Boehner, face as orange as Mel Gibson’s was blue, marched forth with his Bravehearts in a cloud of cigarette smoke toward their inevitable tragedy.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 21, 2011
John Boehner Is Letting The Inmates Run The Asylum
Things are going from bad to worse for Speaker Boehner and the House Republicans.
It hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for the speaker over the last two years since all his Tea Party freshmen hit town. The good news for him was that he was elected speaker; the bad news was who elected him!
And it is not helpful that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor seems to want his job and is coddling the conservatives in the caucus.
For Speaker Boehner this is like herding feral cats that are getting increasingly wild.
The House rejection Tuesday of the bill overwhelming agreed upon in the Senate (89-10) to enact a compromise on the extension of the middle class tax cuts and unemployment payments was a shock—maybe even to Boehner when his caucus revolted over the weekend.
Anyone who is watching the inmates take over the asylum that is becoming the Republican caucus has got to fear for the country—and the Republican party.
If the House Republicans are responsible for raising taxes this year on the middle class, taking $1,500 out of their pockets as a little Christmas present, they will send the very clear message that they do the bidding of the millionaires and billionaires but put coal in the stocking of working families.
And as America’s businessmen and woman understand, the best prescription for growth, hiring, and greater profits, is a middle class that is well-off enough to buy their products. Starving middle class families does not exactly help their bottom line.
In addition, Republicans cannot make the argument that they are so concerned about the deficit that they want to shackle the middle class but let the wealthiest of Americans continue to get hundred of thousands of dollars in tax breaks that “are not paid for!”
The speaker understands that effectively raising taxes now on middle class families, while continuing huge tax cuts for the richest Americans, simply will not wash.
Such a decision is kryptonite in a political year such as this one.
Hiding behind a conference committee or talking about a year extension is simply hogwash—the Tea Party House members want to kill it, pure and simple.
Speaker Boehner is in real trouble on this one and he knows it; he is better off to cut the crazies loose in his own party, make a deal with Democrats and reasonable Republicans, and move on. It is the right thing to do for the country to prevent a double dip recession and the right thing to do politically. If Cantor tries to dethrone him, so be it, he did the right thing. But, right now, he is getting run over by a right wing caucus out of control.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, December 20, 2011
On Tap: “Boehner The Barkeep” And The Radical Republican Winterfest
House Speaker John Boehner gave a spirited reply when asked recently about whether his party’s resistance to middle-class tax cuts risked making Republicans appear to be lackeys of the rich.
“I’ve got 11 brothers and sisters on every rung of the economic ladder, all right?” Boehner said. “My dad owned a bar. I know what’s going on out in America.”
So Boehner has his finger on the American pulse because his deceased father owned a saloon? What strange brew have they been pouring in the speaker’s office?
Whatever advice Earl Boehner has been giving his son from the grave, it doesn’t appear to be working. On Monday, the bar owner’s son aligned himself with House conservatives in opposition to a broadly bipartisan plan to extend a payroll tax cut for 160 million Americans.
This new position, essentially reversing the one Boehner voiced a mere three days earlier, proves anew that the old-school speaker is less a leader of his caucus than a servant of his radical backbenchers. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say he’s their barkeep.
Three times at a news conference on Friday, Boehner was asked whether he could support a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, as Senate Democrats and Republicans were planning. Three times, Boehner declined to state an objection to the two-month extension (he objected to a different part of the agreement, about an oil pipeline, which the senators subsequently changed to his liking).
“I just gave you an answer. How much clearer can I be?” Boehner said, refusing to take issue with the two-month extension.
And so senators passed the extension, 89 to 10. Tea Party heroes Pat Toomey and Marco Rubio voted for the compromise. The fiercest budget cutter of them all, Sen. Tom Coburn, voted for it. Republican lions such as John Cornyn, Jon Kyl and Mitch McConnell voted for it. Only seven Republicans voted “no.”
McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who negotiated the compromise, kept Boehner informed at every step — and was confident enough in Boehner’s acquiescence that his office sent out a notice saying there would be no more legislative business in the Senate until 2 p.m. on Jan. 23. But Boehner’s backbenchers — particularly the Tea Party freshmen — had other ideas, and, in a Saturday teleconference, made clear to Boehner that he would have to abandon the compromise.
The House Republican freshmen have become a bit tipsy with power, and freshman Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) on Tuesday boasted at a news conference that his class is “performing more like sophomores now than freshmen.” Actually, their performance is more sophomoric than anything, but they’ve been able to deliver a string of insults to Boehner, most notably the July revolt that forced the speaker to pull his debt-limit plan from the floor. If Boehner needs any more evidence he’s out of style in his party, he can ponder the rise in the presidential race of Newt Gingrich, the man Boehner tried to depose from the speakership 15 years ago, losing his leadership position in the process.
On Tuesday, Boehner had the unpleasant task of going before the cameras to explain why his House Republicans, after championing tax cuts for millionaires, would be voting against a tax cut for ordinary Americans.
“You know, Americans are tired of, uh, Washington’s short-term fixes and gimmicks,” Boehner began. Behind him in the hallway outside his office, four American flags provided patriotic cover for the reversal. He complained that “the Senate Democratic leaders passed a two-month extension” — omitting mention that Senate Republicans, with Boehner’s knowledge and tacit support, had agreed.
So rather than pass a two-month extension, he’s willing to have the tax cuts lapse entirely when they expire at year end?
“I don’t believe the differences between the House and Senate are that great,” Boehner said, by way of reassurance. But this only confirmed that his side was making a big stink over nothing.
Why didn’t he raise warnings earlier about the two-month extension? “Uh, we expressed our reservations about what the Senate was doing,” he said.
What did he make of the fact that 90 percent of the Senate supported the compromise? Boehner, in reply, demanded to know why “we always have to go to the lowest common denominator” — which is exactly what he had done in letting his backbenchers lead him.
The speaker denied the obvious truth that he had encouraged the compromise before opposing it. He licked his lips, gave a “thanks, everybody” and disappeared.
The sophomoric freshmen must have needed their barkeep to serve them another round.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 19, 2011
“Descending From The Mountaintop”: House Republicans Keeping The Faith
After preaching for weeks about the urgency of Washington taking action to create jobs, lawmakers decided to put their mammon where their mouths are. And so on Tuesday evening they descended from the mountaintop and came forth to anoint a jobs bill of biblical proportions:
“H.Con.Res 13 — Reaffirming ‘In God We Trust’ as the official motto of the United States.”
The grace of this legislation, taken up on the House floor, was not immediately revealed to all. “In God We Trust” has been the nation’s official motto for 55 years, engraved on the currency and public buildings. There is no emerging movement to change that. But House Republicans chose to look beyond the absence of immediate threats and instead protect the motto against yet-unimagined threats in the future.
The legislation “provides Congress with the opportunity to renew its support of a principle that was venerated by the founders of this country, and by its presidents, on a bipartisan basis,” supporters claimed in their analysis. “This Congress can now show that it still believes and recognizes those same eternal truths by approving a resolution that will allow today’s Congress, as representatives of the American people, to reaffirm to the public and the world our nation’s national motto, ‘In God We Trust.’ ”
The infidel opposition took a rather different view. “We are focused on jobs measures,” said Brian Fallon, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “The House Republicans will hopefully get the message to do the same, God willing.”
In a dissenting analysis of the legislation, a group of House Democrats took a similarly skeptical stance. “Today we face the highest budget deficit in our nation’s history, a national unemployment rate of nearly 9 percent, and an ongoing mortgage foreclosure crisis,” they wrote. “American forces are deployed in combat on several fronts. . . . Yet, instead of addressing any of these critical issues, and instead of working to help American families keep a roof over their heads and food on their tables, we are debating whether or not to affirm and proliferate a motto that was adopted in 1956 and that is not imperiled in any respect.”
Then there’s the matter of whether Republicans violated their own promises by bringing up a ceremonial resolution and taking the God bill to the floor without a hearing. House GOP rules forbid suspending House rules to pass a bill if it “expresses appreciation, commends, congratulates, celebrates, recognizes the accomplishments of, or celebrates the anniversary of, an entity, event, group, individual, institution, team or government program.” (It might be argued that God, though an entity, is exempt from the provision.)
So what, pray tell, are Republicans up to? They can tell their constituents that they are doing the Lord’s work in the devil’s town. Because it is still too early to complain about efforts by the ACLU to snuff out Christmas, the In-God-We-Trust legislation provides a stand-in straw man. There’s certainly some appetite for this: Internet rumors proliferated after President Obama’s inauguration warning that he was seeking to remove “In God We Trust” from U.S. coins.
But it also conveys an impression to independent voters that, at a time of economic crisis, Republicans continue to focus on God, gays and guns.
Of course, there may be innocent explanations for the In God We Trust bill. “God” and “job” are both three-letter words with the same vowel. House Republicans may have been confused by the similarity, much like the dyslexic agnostic who wonders if there is a dog.
Notably, the House majority saw no need to protect the nation’s other motto, the one from the Great Seal of the United States that also appears on currency: e pluribus unum. But give the GOP credit for its tenacity: To continue to pursue social policies even while the nation cries out for economic relief requires the patience of Job — not to be confused with jobs.
In support of the God bill, the legislation’s champions quoted John F. Kennedy: “The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” But they left out a better-known Kennedy passage, from his inaugural address: “let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 1, 2011
“In God We Trust”: In Congress We Stagnate
The House Republican leadership is determined to keep the chamber’s schedule to important matters, freeing up congressmen to do more important things, such as attend committee hearings and spend time in the district. That is largely a good idea, as long as it doesn’t keep members from spending time together and learning to work together.
What, then, possessed House leaders to allow the following onto the Tuesday schedule for bills to be considered “under suspension” of the rules?
“Reaffirming ‘In God We Trust‘ as the official motto of the United States and supporting and encouraging the public display of the national motto in all public buildings, public schools, and other government institutions,” the resolution says.
Seriously? Is there any practical importance of this resolution? They surely can’t force schools or even government institutions to display the motto. Schools in particular might be reluctant to do so, rightly worried about offending students and their families who worship different gods or no God at all. Let them worship learning. Let them trust in scholarship and study.
But that isn’t the point of the resolution—and bills considered “under suspension” (meaning they didn’t got through the committee process and require a supermajority for passage) don’t tend to have serious policy implications. They are all about campaigning, often to convince a voter group—in this case, religious voters—that Congress is on their side. And they are also meant, at times, to convince voters that the other party isn’t on their side.
If Congress wants to earn the trust of voters, it might try something that requires a bit more heavy lifting—passing legislation meant to create jobs, for example, or coming to a compromise on legislation to avert the automatic cuts in domestic and defense spending set to occur if the so-called “super committee” cannot find an alternative. “In God We Trust” might be a nice slogan on a coin. But when it comes to healing the ailing economy, the vaunted phrase is barely worth the dime it’s engraved on.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, November 1, 2011
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 