I'm not shocked. From that article:
Facing a rebellion over his latest debt ceiling proposal, Speaker John A. Boehner on Tuesday told House Republicans that he would bring legislation to a vote that would raise the government’s borrowing authority with no strings attached.
“You all know that our members are not crazy about voting to increase the debt ceiling,” Mr. Boehner said, explaining that his conference was frustrated with President Obama’s refusal to negotiate over a debt ceiling increase. “And so the fact is we’ll let the Democrats put the votes up. We’ll put a minimum number of votes up to get it passed.”
More an example of when you are given lemons, have the Democrats squeeze them into lemonade.
He knows that the House Republicans are so splintered that he can't get them to pass anything at all on their own. The Tea Partiers are not going to vote for any raise in the Debt Ceiling unless it included Obama being castrated, and the more moderate Pubs are sick of the Tea Party but want to do some face saving and mild anti-Obama stuff and throw some mild add-in on like this Vet benefits thing, just because Obama told them he wants a clean bill.
I think Obama has decided that he is out of elections and doesn't care, and so if he said he only will sign a clean bill, he won't sign it even if they put a rider in supporting apple pie and motherhood. And Obama would be fine with the whole thing going down in flames again and he'll blame the Pubs for setting the fire if they don't pass anything.
So Boehner counted noses and knows that he has enough Democrats and a few sane Republicans to pass a clean Debt Ceiling bill. But for the fall election, that gives the Pubs lovely deniability to his base - he'll say the Dems raised the Debt Ceiling, he wanted to stop it, and if the Pubs had controlled the Senate they could have done so.
Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 9:48 am
