Countdown to the GOPocalypse

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In dueling speeches Monday night, "Where Obama spoke of compromise, Boehner made excuses for intransigence. Where Obama emphasized how much he had already conceded, Boehner detailed how little he was willing to give up. Where Obama argued for a grand bargain, Boehner declared his support for Cut, Cap and Balance [already rejected by the Senate.]" — Ezra Klein

This is getting surreal. Steve Benen posts Political Animal – With seven days to go:

Yesterday brought us two competing speeches and two competing plans, but where does that leave us exactly one week before the nation loses its ability to its bills? Nowhere good.

Among Democrats, leaders on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue seemed to accept Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) plan as the least offensive of the remaining alternatives. Though President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had both committed to a compromise with at least some revenue, both threw their support to Reid’s blueprint yesterday.

[Read Reid's plan: http://wapo.st/pQwdKO. Note: The plan is a major concession to the GOP - it gives up any new tax revenues, and is no longer the "balanced" plan that President Obama wanted.]

On the other side of the aisle, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) continues to push his alternative, even though he knows it’s likely to be rejected by the Senate and the White House.

[Read Boehner's plan: http://wapo.st/pFMbcp.]

[The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has issued this Statement on House Speaker Boehner’s New Budget Proposal:

House Speaker John Boehner’s new budget proposal would require deep cuts in the years immediately ahead in Social Security and Medicare benefits for current retirees, the repeal of health reform’s coverage expansions, or wholesale evisceration of basic assistance programs for vulnerable Americans.

The plan is, thus, tantamount to a form of “class warfare.” If enacted, it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.

This may sound hyperbolic, but it is not. The mathematics are inexorable.]

Late yesterday afternoon … the Speaker had another problem: the right doesn’t like his plan, either. [And neither do conservative lobbying groups.]

* * *

Boehner also won’t get much in the way of support from the activist base.

No sooner did House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) unveil his plan to raise the country’s debt ceiling and avoid default than a coalition of conservative groups and lawmakers panned the proposal.

The Cut, Cap and Balance Coalition is a group of more than 100 conservative groups and several dozen lawmakers in both chambers who have called for passage of a balanced budget amendment in exchange for a vote to raise the country’s debt ceiling. The group said in a statement Monday afternoon that the plan put forth by House Republican leaders “falls short of meeting (the coalition’s) principles.”

[Note: This balanced budget amendment fell far short of the two-thirds vote required in the House, and was tabled (killed) in the Senate without a vote. There is no support for the CCBC and what Bruce Bartlett, deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department under Bush 41 and who now writes about supply-side economics, dismissed as "quite possibly the stupidest constitutional amendment I think I have ever seen. It looks like it was drafted by a couple of interns on the back of a napkin. Every senator cosponsoring this POS should be ashamed of themselves." Dopiest Constitutional Amendment of All Time? | Capital Gains and Games.]

This is critically important. Boehner’s entire strategy at this point rests on his ability to pass his bill and dare the Senate and White House to reject it. But this only works if the Speaker can get enough votes from his own caucus — and of yesterday, that was far from certain.

There are 240 House Republicans, and it will take 217 votes to pass Boehner’s plan, which will likely get little or no Democratic support. Are there more than two dozen far-right GOP lawmakers who’ll balk? We’ll find out tomorrow, when the Speaker brings his measure to the floor.

[I]f Boehner’s bill dies in the House, Reid’s compromise may suddenly become the only plan left standing.

And what if the House kills Boehner’s plan and rejects Reid’s plan? We’re all screwed.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that this is not an economic crisis but a political crisis manufactured by the Tea-Publicans. Congress could pass a one page bill raising the federal debt ceiling in five minutes, as it has done numerous times in the past.

But the Tea-Publicans are holding the full faith and credit of the United States hostage to extort concessions from the president and Democrats, to concede to their every hostage demand for a radical extremist agenda that is not supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans in poll after poll.

This is an extremist radical minority that would rather default on the debt obligations of the United States and cause an economic catastrophe than to ever compromise with a president they deem to be illegitmate. They are committed to the destruction of government, not governance. After all, they ran for office on the promise of "shut 'er down!" Why is anyone surprised now?

If "We’re all screwed" it will squarely be the fault of the so-called Tea Party conservative movement. It's in our national security interests to "Toss the Tea Party in 2012," if not sooner.

UPDATE: Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has a six-word warning for Boehner on the economy: “If you break it, you own it.”