The GOP is on Cruz-control to a government shutdown

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, just lost control of the GOP caucus he ostensibly leads in the House to an interloper from the Senate, Texas demagogue Sen. Ted "Calgary" Cruz, who has mesmerized the Tea Party faction of the GOP caucus with his hair-brained scheme to defund "ObamaCare" by a threat to shut down the government. Ted Cruz Is Making Life Miserable For House Republicans:

Screenshot-9For the last few weeks, House Speaker John Boehner has been trying to find a way to convince his caucus to vote for a bill that keeps the
government open after Sept. 30 without picking a fight over Obamacare. But a minority of his caucus has been insisting on defunding Obamacare, egged on by outside conservative groups and a handful of far-right Republican Senators, most importantly Ted Cruz (Texas).

On Wednesday, the TanMan gave in to demands from the radical Tea Party members of his GOP caucus, and agreed to proceed with the hair-brained scheme of "Calgary" Cruz to shut down the federal government. The tail is wagging the dog. Shutdown looms as House targets health-care law:

House Republican leaders announced Wednesday morning that they would
take a risky double-barreled attack on President Obama’s health-care
law, making it the cornerstone fight over government funding due to
expire Sept. 30 and the effort to lift the Treasury’s borrowing
authority.

Speaker John A. Boehner, flanked by his leadership
team, told reporters that the stopgap government funding bill that they
will advance Friday would yield to conservative demands of including a
rider to block funding for the law commonly known as Obamacare.

In addition, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor laid out his
party’s legislative grab bag of requests that will be attached to a bill
that would lift the debt ceiling, including a delay of the health law,
an overhaul of the tax code and approval of an energy pipeline running
from Canada to the gulf coast.

Obama immediately rejected that
strategy and, in a meeting with the nation’s top executives, said he
would oppose any effort to defund the health-care law or negotiate over
the debt limit.

The vote to defund "ObamaCare" will mark the 42nd time that House Tea-Publicans have voted to kill "ObamaCare" — because the 42nd time is the charm?

Reality check: whatever these insurrectionist economic terrorists pass in the House is DOA in the Senate:

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid has said he plans to strip
the health-care provisions from the government funding bill and send it
back to Boehner with just days left before the Sept. 30 deadline,
leaving the speaker the difficult choice of approving a stopgap bill
with Democratic votes or shutting down the government.

What the TanMan is really doing here is punting this issue to the Senate so that "Calgary" Cruz — who has been a thorn in his side — will own the failure of his hair-brained scheme, rather than Boehner.

WreckingCrewThe House leadership has already tipped its hand that it expects "Calgary" Cruz's hair-brained scheme to fail, because why would you need Eric Cantor's Plan B to delay "ObamaCare" for a year in the vote on the federal debt ceiling if you were confident that defunding "ObamaCare" in the Continuing Resolution scheme was going to do the trick?

This vote is all about placating conservative groups and the Tea Party crazy base for yet another "feel good" vote to delay the invevitable.

Eric Cantor's Plan B "grab bag" of items from the Tea Party wish list demonstrates that he believes it is also DOA in the Senate. It is yet another "feel good" vote to delay the invevitable.

Democrats and the president are united in making it clear that there will be no negotiation with insurrectionist economic terrorists on the full faith and credit of the United States. President Obama said today in a speech to the Business Roundtable, “You have never in the history of the United States seen the threat of
not raising the debt ceiling to extort a president or a governing
party. It’s irresponsible.” “What I will not do is to create a habit, a pattern whereby the full
faith and credit of the United States ends up being a bargaining chip to
make policy,” he said.

Remember, this is money already spent by this Tea-Publican controlled Congress. Raising the federal debt ceiling is merely an acknowledgement that the United States will make good on its debts — as it is required to do by the U.S. Constitution. Last March, in referring to this idea of linking "ObamaCare" funding to
an increase in the federal debt ceiling, Boehner asked: “Do you want to risk
the full faith and credit of the U.S. government over Obamacare? That’s a
very tough argument to make.” And yet, here we are.

With a government shutdown deadline only 12 days away, and no adults in the House GOP leadership with whom the president and Democrats can negotiate with in good faith, the White House has instructed federal agencies to prepare for the worst.

The White House told federal agencies on Tuesday to prepare for a government shutdown.

President Obama's budget director Sylvia Matthews Burwell in a memo
to agencies said they should set their plans in case Congress fails to
pass a funding measure by the end of the month. The government would
shut down on Oct. 1 without action by Congress.

While there is time for Congress to act, Burwell wrote that "prudent management" requires agencies to prepare for a shutdown.

As Steve Benen noted today, "It would have been quite easy to avoid this showdown, if only Boehner
were a more effective Speaker and his members weren't so overwhelmed
with madness."

The problem here is that the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, is the "Worst. Speaker. Ever." He is a mere bystander, a Speaker of the House in name only. He is held hostage by a radical minority of his GOP caucus.

If the Tea-Publican Party wants to commit political suicide, that's its choice. But Tea-Publicans have no right to commit murder-suicide. They have no right to destroy the economy and to destroy the lives of millions of Americans in the process because these nihilistic insurrectionist economic terrorists cannot have their way.