Boehner’s not going to end the shutdown. He just wants to kick the debt ceiling debate down the road because he knows he can’t actually win by letting the country default. If he decouples the debt ceiling from the shutdown, he can maybe get enough concessions to end the shutdown while saving face. What those concessions might be, though, is anyone’s guess.
The senate is unlikely to agree to a six week delay though. It’s in their interest to keep the pressure on Boehner, short term, and, cripes, who wants to do this again during the holiday season. But if the senate turns him down, Boehner might figure he can argue this all the Democrats fault so please please please stop blaming him for this.
There has been no clarification as to whether the six week legislation would include a CR to end the shutdown. The President and Reid have both already said they’re open to a short-term legislation to allow for negotiations, if they don’t agree to Boehner’s six week legislation they would be going back on what they’ve already said in public and I hope that in response Boehner would simply sit and do nothing. With the clean six-week bill sitting out there they can approve it at any time, if they choose not to then it will be 100% the fault of the Senate and the President for causing the first deliberate sovereign default in the modern history of the United States.
Lol - I like how you go from saying that there’s been no clarification that this will be a clean CR to talking about how Obama would be going back on his word if he doesn’t pass a clean CR. But we’re not going to get a clean CR, at least according to the AP article I linked. Here - it’s super short. I’ll just quote it.
So the measure will advance if Obama agrees to negotiate - which, you know, there’s nothing to negotiate and anyway, Obama has said that he will not negotiate while the government’s shut down. “Vast differences”, my fat ass.
Nope, not what I said. I’ve found historically when someone quotes me and then states that I said something I didn’t further discussion from that point is pointless, so I’ll be disregarding any comments from you for the rest of this thread.
No, your words are right there for everyone to see. Here they are again:
Three whole sentences from “there is no been clarification” to “the clean six-week bill sitting out there”. But I can see why you’d want to pretend that didn’t happen.
Anyway, here’s more about Boehner’s offer, which is very much not a clean CR bill of any sort.
At this point people are blaming Republicans for the shut down and the debt ceiling crisis, they’ve spent three years building that position for themselves. Any consequences of this shutdown and debt ceiling crisis are being laid at the Republican’s doorstep.
Politically, I don’t see why Obama should settle for anything short of unconditional surrender.
Of course playing chicken with our economy is a bad idea but constantly and consistently capitulating to a vocal minority is just as bad for the Republic.
Not quite, the consequences of the shutdown and even worse default if it happens cannot be laid at the Republican’s doorsteps or the Republicans in Congress’s doorsteps. I wish that could be, but instead the consequences will be laid at the doorsteps of every American.
I’m fine with the President’s position that he won’t negotiate while the government is shut down or “under the threat of default”, I’m not fine with this concept that he should not negotiate at all. I was against shutting down the government over the ACA, that was stupid. Even dumber was letting Ted Cruz push the House into doing that and then slink away from bearing any political responsibility for the mess he made.
My preference instead would have been for the Republicans and the Democrats to work out differences over spending (ignore the ACA) prior to the shutdown, and to have passed a negotiated CR. I think the ACA debate made that impossible to happen, although I also think the fact that the President wouldn’t speak to Boehner for like 17 days prior to the shutdown did not help either.
Once the shutdown actually happened, to me it became a little murkier. I don’t believe the President should refuse to negotiate at all, but I do think it is reasonable to say “let’s reopen the government, lets raise the debt ceiling, and then we’ll talk.” But the CR needs to be of short duration, so that there is actually a reason to talk. If we give the Democrats a year CR, they won’t talk to us for a year, that’s simple fact. The debt ceiling is a bit different, I tend to think we should exclusively argue during funding/budget battles, and the debt ceiling should be increase pro forma to avoid roiling the market with uncertainty.
If “unconditional surrender” means “raising the debt ceiling and getting a CR in the short term, then negotiation” I’m fine with that. If it means “no negotiation at all even if we get a CR and a debt ceiling increase” then no, that’s not acceptable. The Republicans control half the legislature, the idea that they should have no impact on policy is not reasonable and is not the way the constitution was designed.
Anyway, it appears the House-Obama negotiations ended in failure. There was apparently receptiveness to a debate on the budgetary issues that the likes of Cantor and Ryan had been bringing up in public over the past few days. As has been the problem since 2010, the problem was much more over revenue than over spending cuts.
This is one of the biggest problems with the House Republicans, they want to cut spending but do want to cut revenue. It’s not a realistic position either politically or even economically. Both have to happen to get our debt under control. I don’t want to raise taxes, but I think we have to raise taxes. I don’t want to do a lot of things, but I do them because there are things you have to do. That’s a failure of the Tea Party, they do not understand that there are things you don’t like that you have to do for your own good–and raising taxes is one of them.
Aside from the failed grand bargain compromise before the budget control act was passed, the GOP have never really offered tax increases, and that is 100% on them. It’s also derailed what may have been a chance for the House Republicans to actually have a meaningful negotiation with the President that would have helped lower our long term debt, but they were unwilling to raise any revenue.
Now I suspect this ends in the Senate, possibly some form of Susan Collins plan. A Senate GOP backed bill that passes a CR and a debt ceiling increase and includes a repeal of the medical device tax. It gets passed by the Senate, and then Boehner has to let it through the House (potentially letting it pass with an open House vote in which a majority of his own caucus votes against it, as he has done before when he was proven unable to lead the caucus to an actual decision.)
I’m expecting the Senate bill will probably include something the Democrats can put in their hats as a win as well, since the repeal of the medical device tax (while favored by many Democrats in Congress) by itself would be seen as a concession to Republicans. Maybe an end to the sequester or modification of the sequester, I’m not sure.
I think he was referring to the latest polls, which show significant backlash from Republican voters, the majority of whom are now blaming Republican legislators for this mess. I’m pretty sure it was an easy bet that this would happen eventually, but I admit that I laughed out loud when it was reported last night. Now the scramble begins to rehabilitate themselves without looking like the cowards they are, and spinning any concessions to look like they were their ideas, accompanied by frowny faces and grim pronouncements about “the American people”.
Boy, you must be reading different newspapers to be talking about the President’s risk of looking like a fool. Because the ones I read show that the President’s approval rating has gone up, the Democratic Party’s approval has gone slightly down, and the view of Republicans has tanked.
And, from where I’m sitting, the GOP’s posture seem to be somewhere between “disorganized retreat” and “getting run over by one of those gigantic dump trucks they use at strip mines.” But it’s nice to know that someone still thinks that Obama is in political peril.
Anyone that knew anything about politics or history knew for a fact 15 days before the shutdown that if there was a shutdown the GOP would be blamed. Simple fact.
There’s an old argument about not getting into a war of words with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Disputes between the Presidency and Congress tend to always end with the public supporting the President. That saying comes from the concept that you shouldn’t pick a fight with a big media outlet or newspaper, but it applies to the relationship between the President and the Congress. The President has much higher profile, and can get his message out with far more attention and much easier than the Congress can theirs.
But my point was, the reason the President should try to come to some agreement is that this isn’t just about his ego, it’s about the country he has a responsibility of stewardship over. It’s not been helpful that he has repeatedly lied throughout this shutdown, by saying things like “never before have we seen a President forced to negotiate to get a debt ceiling increase” or etc. In fact it’s common to negotiate in order to get a CR or a debt ceiling increase. Now, for many, many years debt ceiling increases operated under an informal rule in which they were passed along with budgets and they were not a common political topic. But we’ve had fights over them before and almost certainly will again.
I can agree with making the Republicans turn the lights back on first, but I don’t agree that you shouldn’t negotiate at all.
The problem with this is the Republicans have to give something other than ending the shutdown or increasing the debt ceiling in a negotiation. And they are not likely to do that.
When someone starts a post with such a deep misunderstanding of what I said it’s very difficult for me to even know how to respond, because I feel I have to correct such a “deficit of reading comprehension” from the get go that it’s almost a burden.
I did not say the President had bad poll numbers.
I did not say the Republicans had good poll numbers.
I did not say the President was faring badly in the court of public opinion.
I said that the only way the President could negotiate with Congress without looking like a fool was after a CR had passed and a debt limit had passed.
Saying someone looks like a fool does not mean they have bad poll numbers. The President looked like a fool when he declared a red line on Syria and then did nothing when it was violated over a dozen times. [I am quite pleased with how Syria has been handled at this point, but anyone who thinks the red line comment was anything other than stupid is blind.] The President looked like a fool there, but it had no measurable impact on his polling numbers–not all foolish acts hurt you in the polls.
The reason I said 4, is because the President has only said a few hundred times he will not negotiate at all on either the shutdown or the debt ceiling, until the debt ceiling has been raised and the shutdown has ended. He has said at that point he is willing to discuss any issue.
This situation can only end in compromise, and compromise typically requires some form of negotiation.
The President could not engage in said negotiation without going back on extremely public and forceful pronouncements.
Thus, I saw it as a logical conclusion that a way to allow the President to compromise would have been a short term debt limit increase and a short term CR. This allows the President to negotiate, but not during the shutdown and not under the threat of default–he had specifically said he would not do that.
Now that I’ve explained that in a format I hope you can understand (I’m not holding my breath), I will say that is all contingent on the concept of the House passing legislation and the President and the House working out a compromise.
It looks like that simply won’t happen at all at this point. Which means most likely we have a Senate-centric deal that is sent to the House. Boehner lets the full House vote on it (as he did the Taxpayer Relief Act to end the fiscal cliff), and then it goes to the President who signs it. Neither Boehner or the President treat with one another, and we go back to where we were before, which is basically having a dysfunctional House of Representatives with even more dysfunctional Republican leadership unable to pass any real legislation and being rescued at the last minute by the Senate.
Not in a direct negotiation, unfortunately the House Republicans won’t support any revenue increases which makes any negotiations difficult as it removes the necessary give and take.
What we did have in the past, during the first big fight over the debt ceiling after the House went Republican, was the Budget Control Act. This was basically an act that raised revenue and cut spending, but was done in a framework where the House could argue that they didn’t “really” do either, but just “set in motion” this automatic and painful situation that would “force” a better grand bargain. But the House Republican leadership did sign off on it.
The BCA ultimately ended in the fiscal cliff, which was ended by the Taxpayer Relief Act (which left sequestration in place), which pared down some of the tax increases as part of the BCA but not all of them. This again was signed off on by House leadership, but not voted on by a majority of House Republicans (Boehner himself voted for it, breaking the tradition that Speakers do not vote in the House.)
I suspect the same thing happens here, whatever bill the Senate comes up with, Boehner will yet again let the full House vote to end the shutdown/debt ceiling fight.
The GOP also has the responsibility to govern, because they control half of Congress. And they are quite simply not up to the job. When pointed out that this has been the least productive Congress ever, Boehner responded to the effect of, it isn’t how many laws have been passed, it is also about how many laws have been repealed. That’s wonderful; except name the laws that Congress has repealed!
The fact is that the Republican Party as a group wants to act like a minority party that can act as bombthrowers and push aside their responsibilities, and the public is seeing that vividly.
What about the whoppers that Tea Party leaders have been telling: “We didn’t want the government to close,” for example? It’s fact that it has been a long time in planning to use shutdown as a tool to get rid of Obamacare in some fashion. That strategy failed, yet every Republican in Congress supported it.
And keep in mind that nine times since the GOP took control of the House, they have voted for CRs that did not have strings attached to them. The precedent is clearly one of clean CRs to keep government open, and the House Republicans chose not to abide by the precedent.
If you don’t think the President is negotiating right now, while also saying that he’s not negotiating, I have some fine land in Florida to sell you. I bet you’ll buy it, too.