Quote of the Day

“If the latest round of polls is accurate, Democrats will lose nearly every competitive Senate race, giving Republicans full control of Congress for the first time in 10 years.

This is excellent news for Democrats.

Instead of another two years of the same old gridlock that has turned voters off of both parties, Democrats will get to kick back with a large tub of buttery popcorn and watch the Republican soap opera hit peak suds.

In the House, the Boehner vs. Tea Party plot line will heat up, as several anti-Boehner party rebels are expected to win seats now held by more genteel Republicans. The Senate may end up more like a classic sitcom: Can two grandstanders like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz run for president at the same time without driving the majority leader crazy?

The inconvenient truth for the Republican Party is that it’s not ready for prime time, yet it’s on the verge of fully sharing with the president the responsibility of running the country.”

Bill Scher, “Good News Democrats, You’re Going to Lose!,” Politico

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/good-news-democrats-youre-going-to-lose-111467.html#ixzz3EpMWX08G

Anarchists Running the House

“You just had a lot of members who just don’t want to vote for anything.”  Devin Nunes (R-CA)

The House couldn’t pass a border bill today despite House leaders’ efforts to get their most intransigent members on board by sweetening the deal for them.

The Anarchist wing of the GOP has taken over.  Hey, Boehner, you reap what you sow, and you sowed a crop of nut jobs.

Your New Majority Leader

Ok, so Eric Cantor says he will stop being Majority Leader on July 31.  Who replaces him?

Technically next in line is the #3 in the House, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy of California.  Cantor says he’s supports him, which may or may not be a good thing for McCarthy.

Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas, a Boehner loyalist, says he’s running.  And the Tea Party is lining up behind another Texan — Jeb Hensarling.

John Boehner’s Right!

“I’m not going to get into this distinction between the tea party and Republicans.  It’s a distinction you’re going to have a hard time finding.”  Speaker of the House John Boehner

That’s because the tea party has taken over the party and moved it to the right.  They are all tea partiers now.

Don’t Gloat

GOP House Speaker John Boehner is going to bring a “clean” debt ceiling bill up for a vote tonight.  He’s counting on almost all Dem support to pass it, with maybe 16-20 Republicans.

Meanwhile, Heritage Action and Club for Growth are telling members to vote no and promising to “score” the vote, which means it will count against them in their final grade if they vote yes.  The Senate Conservatives Fund (an outside Tea Party group, not an official Senate group) is calling for Boehner to be replaced as Speaker.  I guess they’d rather have the world financial system collapse.  It does feel as if we now have three major parties — Democrats, Republicans, and Anarchists.

Nancy Pelosi told House Dems “don’t gloat.”  With the complete impasse on minimum wage, unemployment benefits, tweaking Obamacare, equal pay for women, job equality for gays, immigration, etc., there’s really nothing to gloat over.

Tea Party Tyranny

From  “Tea Party Ain’t Over Yet:  How Conservatives Still Control Congress,” Talking Points Memo:

“The tea party has taken a series of hits since it goaded Republican leaders into a costly and self-defeating government shutdown last fall.  But the conservative movement remains formidable when it comes to pushing Republican leaders to just say no, at all costs, to new economic and domestic initiatives that aren’t essential to avert immediate crisis.

“The emerging dynamic is one where the tea party can no longer hold the basic functions of government hostage to conservative policy reforms, but has effective veto power over major new proposals that require bipartisan deal-making.

“Even on initiatives that are broadly popular, as in the case of emergency unemployment compensation and raising the minimum wage, conservatives have successfully blocked any movement forward.

“An initiative that Republican strategists say is imperative to stave off electoral extinction — immigration reform — isn’t going anywhere.  Recently, Speaker John Boehner took a significant step toward action by releasing a pro-reform blueprint.  But within one week, after a fierce backlash from tea party organizations…he hit the brakes and signaled that the House wouldn’t take up reform.”  Emphasis added.

A minority of the minority is controlling this country, is keeping it from moving forward economically and socially.  It really doesn’t matter at all that Obama beat Mitt, that Dems have a majority in the Senate (because you need 60), and that Dem House candidates got over a million more votes than GOP candidates.  What the hell did we win exactly?

The Shutdown in Six Words

According to Politico, on October 2nd, President Obama took John Boehner aside and asked, “John, what happened?”

“I got overrun, that’s what happened,” Boehner replied.  And those six words pretty much explain the first half of October.

 

 

Caucus of Cowards

There have always been far-left and far-right members of Congress.  They ranted their rants and voted their votes, but didn’t have an effect beyond their low numbers.  They had no weapons to force normal members to vote with them, so they were isolated and contained.  They got patted on the head, but they never held a gun to anybody else’s head.  You think LBJ ever lost a minute’s sleep as majority leader or president worried about the far, far right?  It is to laugh.

But of the 144 GOP House members who last night voted against the Senate re-open/raise bill, only a third at most were voting their own views.  The rest were voting from fear, not conviction.  These cowards are the bigger threat to our well-being because they add significant numbers — and power — to the ignorance and idiocy of the shut-it-down/blow-it-up fringe.

John Boehner thought he was giving the crackpots enough rope to hang themselves.  But from their perspective, they got enough rope to climb out the bedroom window and trash the neighborhood.  They’re back in their room again, but they’re just resting.  Who will bar the window and take that rope away?

So Here’s the Deal

This is the final deal Reid and McConnell negotiated:

The government will be funded until January 15.  The debt ceiling is raised until February 7.

There will be income verification for those getting subsidies under Obamacare.

There will be yet another committee appointed to negotiate a budget for the rest of the fiscal year that ends September 30, 2014.  It must report back by December 13.  Good luck with that.

Treasury is allowed to use “extraordinary measures” to delay hitting the new debt ceiling.  They’ve been using such measures this time around since May, when they technically ran out of money.

Agency heads don’t have flexibility to move money around to deal with the sequester.

The Senate will vote first.  Boehner has indicated he will bring it to the floor of the House even if it’s not supported by a majority of the GOP majority.  We should be able to get both houses to vote and the Prez to sign by midnight.

The Emerging Deal

So it looks as if the latest  in the Reid-McConnell negotiations is to re-open the government until January 15 and raise the debt ceiling until February 7.  The deal would require income verification for those getting Obamacare subsidies, which was already in the law (as it should be!), until Obama waived it.  All this is taking place in the Senate (with Boehner being kept in the loop), so it’s not sure what would happen in the House.