Friday, July 29, 2011

John Boehner is Humiliated Publicly, Still Orange

Last night was a show vote just to prove Boehner had control of his caucus, and the beginning of a dance that will see this bill moved to the Senate, where it would be defeated. He didn't even make it past step one:
What was originally described as a brief snafu has turned into a stunning rebuke of House Republican leaders, who were unable Thursday to round up the minimum number of votes to pass Speaker John Boehner's debt limit bill.

The vote, originally scheduled for 6 p.m., was delayed at the last minute, when Boehner and his leadership team finally faced the harsh reality: despite a swing of momentum in their direction over the previous 24 hours, they didn't have the votes. And with no Democrats there to help them, they needed 217 Republicans to be on board. They were not.

Boehner and his leadership team met for hours, in various leadership offices, with reluctant members, and persuasive supporters, hoping to cobble together a majority. Meanwhile, leadership aides insisted for as long as possible that a vote was still planned late Thursday.

At about 10:30 p.m., House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) emerged from Boehner's second floor Capitol office and announced to assembled reporters, "No vote tonight."
Today he'll probably find some way to get it passed by putting plenty of teabagger language in there, and so this game gets delayed for yet another day.

My guess is that it the process remains the same, the senate passes the Reid bill, and sends it back to the house (which I think can happen at the earliest Monday).

And then (I think) the house would have a chance to pass that bill or the country defauts.

I would still bet heavily on us not defaulting (because if we did it would break the most basic law of politics that rich people/corporations always get what they want), but this whole thing has been handled so incompetently by everyone not named Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell that there's at least a chance this actually does happen.

At this point, you'd have to think there's some serious reflection going on in the White House. Maybe using our nation's impending default as an excuse for to try and force through a bipartisan 4 trillion dollar grand austerity wet dream bargain wasn't such a great idea after all?

1 comment:

  1. They have 3 days to avert the economic meltdown of the country, and possibly planet, by each saying the word "Aye" once.

    WHAT THE FUCK IS THE HOLDUP?

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