BOOM! Goes the Boehner Plan

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Rachel Maddow has aired several segments this year making a rather convincing case that the Weeper of the House, John Boehner, is not good at his job. I have argued that he is the weakest Speaker of the House in modern times, and is a captive to his radical right Tea Party wing.

After Boehner's "utter mendacity" of a speech on Monday Night (as characterized by Joan Walsh), Boehner's plan was to push a reconstituted bill comprised of proposals already rejected by Congress in a largely symbolic vote on Wednesday. It would not pass the Senate, and President Obama issued a veto threat on Tuesday. It was not a serious plan.

No matter. The Boehner plan blew up in the House on Tuesday on opposition from his own Tea-Publican caucus. Vote on Boehner Plan Delayed Amid Opposition – NYTimes.com:

House Republican leaders were forced on Tuesday night to delay a vote scheduled on their plan to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, as conservative lawmakers expressed skepticism and Congressional budget officials said the plan did not deliver the promised savings.

* * *

Mr. Boehner rolled out a two-stage plan on Monday that would allow the $14.3 trillion federal debt limit to rise immediately by about $1 trillion in exchange for $1.2 trillion in spending cuts. The plan tied a second increase early next year to the ability of a new bipartisan Congressional committee to produce more reductions.

The plan was met with skepticism — and in many cases outright rejection — by several conservative House members who said its savings did not go far enough. President Obama and most Congressional Democrats also have rejected the proposal, saying it is only a short-term solution and could lead to market uncertainty and instability.

Mr. Boehner’s troubles piled up late Tuesday afternoon when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said his plan would cut spending by $850 billion during the next decade — about $150 billion less than the $1 trillion increase proposed for the debt ceiling.

Mr. Boehner was forced to quickly retreat from the bill. Republican leaders said they would probably rework it to in a way that would reflect the decreased savings by raising the debt limit by less than $850 billion. Such a change would mean that the Obama administration would need to make another request for an increase in a matter of months, making the deal even less palatable to Democrats.

Earlier in the day before the CBO scoring, House Majority Leader Eic Cantor tried to spur his members to support their leaders. Mr. Cantor told Tea-Publicans in a Tuesday morning meeting to “stop grumbling and whining and to come together as conservatives and rally behind” Mr. Boehner’s plan. Oops!

But others argued the opposite case. Four Republican senators with Tea Party links wrote a letter to their House colleagues on Tuesday urging them to vote against the measure. The Club for Growth, which scores members on their fiscally conservative votes, came out against the plan, as did other conservative groups including the Heritage Foundation and a coalition of Tea Party groups around the country.

Some House members said they had already concluded that the bill was flawed.

Part of the problem here is Republican leadership who are really bad at their jobs. They are proving themselves entirely incapable and incompetent at governance.

I suspect the bill that will eventually emerge at the last minute will be Sen. Harry Reid's bill that effectively gives the Tea-Publicans everything they demanded at the start of negotiations, before they started overreaching in bad faith. It is a "cave" and a "win" for Tea-Publicans. It also rewards their hostage taking strategy once again, which will only encourage future hostage taking, until Americans start regarding this behavior as unacceptable economic terrorism.

Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, waiting to see how Mr. Boehner’s measure fares, has not brought his own debt legislation to the floor.

Mr. Reid’s proposal would raise the debt ceiling through 2012 and cut $1.2 trillion from federal agency budgets and recurring programs like agriculture subsidies. Like some earlier Republican plans, the plan also counts about $1 trillion in savings from winding down combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Speaker Boehner’s plan is not a compromise,” Mr. Reid said, after meeting with Senate Democrats, referring to the earlier version of the bill. “It was written for the Tea Party and not the American people. Democrats will not vote for it. Democrats will not vote for it. It’s dead on arrival in the Senate, if they get it out of the House.”

The TanMan, John Boehner, is really bad at his job. He should consider resigning from his Speaker position. If his Tea-Publican caucus puts this country into default and blows up our economy AGAIN, the American people will demand his resignation.

UPDATE: Can we now dispense with the bullshit GOP talking point that the president and Democrats have not submitted a plan? (How do you think they derive at the numbers under discussion you maroons?) The CBO has now scored Sen. Harry Reid's "cave" plan and it is saves more than Boehner's dead-in-the-water plan. Reid debt-reduction proposal would save more than Boehner plan, Congressional Budget Office finds – The Washington Post:

The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid’s plan to reduce the nation’s debt would fall short of its $2.7 trillion target, but save significantly more over the next decade than a bill introduced by House Speaker John A. Boehner.

The announcement came a day after the CBO dealt Boehner’s measure a potentially devastating setback, saying that spending cuts included in the House bill would save only about $850 billion over the next decade — far less than the $1.2 trillion advertised.

If Reid's bill is the best we can do, just get it done.