The American Spectator

Al Adab| 7.28.11 @ 5:56PM

Imperfect as this is, do it. Reid can either put up or shut up. House already did CC&B which is preferable but that too goes nowhere with these people in control. Dear Mr. President and Sen. Reid: lead, follow, or get out of the way. We have a national economy to salvage.

TRK| 7.28.11 @ 6:13PM

Boehner's bill also goes nowhere. If the Boehner bill passes then Reid will call for a vote the same day and kill it in the senate, then send back a "compromise" bill that looks like Boehner's bill but with more chances to raise taxes. Boehner's bill doesn't cut enough real spending in the short term to make a significant difference anyway and good intentions for future spending cuts aren't worth spit.

If you don't believe me look at how eager the libs are to see Boehner fall into this trap, and how frantic they are about Erickson over at Red State trying to stop it from happening. Erickson is right on this one.

Al Adab| 7.28.11 @ 6:28PM

TRK, you are of course correct. Cuts over ten years will never happen and Reid et al will never back off their "Tax the rich" obsession. It is a matter of Faith to them.

This should be the final House proposal and let them rot in the Senate and WH.

TRK| 7.28.11 @ 7:16PM

I think you missed the point. It could be the final proposal originating in the House but Reid is going to modify it and send it right back. Boehner won't be able to get the votes for a compromise between his version and Reid's counter, so it ends there, with Boehner getting the blame.

What Boehner needed to do was find a way to kill the deal that put the blame on Reid and Obama. He got played.

simon templar| 7.28.11 @ 7:20PM

TRK, it is refreshing to read that someone actually has some brains in their head and uses them. You will be vindicated. Spot on, maybe you could explain this to our local Quin here at TAS.

Bob Grant| 7.28.11 @ 7:23PM

I disagree. The Boehner bill would be considered a compromise to the Cut, Cap, and Balance bill.

Boehner shouldn't feel compelled to even vote on a reworked Boehner bill by Reid.

I'd play hardball on the original Boehner bill. Republicans can only do so much. They can only propose so many bills.

Like Obama said: I need a dance partner.

TRK| 7.28.11 @ 8:09PM

Boehner's plan and Reid's plan are very, very similar. The main disagreement is over whether to have a small bump now in the debt ceiling, and another round of negotiations just before the election, or do it all now. Boehner's being too transparently political about it. Dumb.

So when Reid sends back a modified Boehner bill, and Boehner knows it's impossible to get the votes for it no matter how similar it is, the bill dies on Boehner's desk. He got played.

Bob Grant| 7.28.11 @ 8:17PM

Oh so wrong. This Boehner bill (a.k.a. compromise to the Cut, Cap, and Balance bill) should be the line in the sand considering Reid nor Obama have.not.presented.a.single.bill.

If Reid kicks it back with modifications and dies, he and the party will look like the intransigent ones. The public will see right through this.

The Boehner bill is not the final solution but kicks the can down the road another nine months and keeps this issue at the forefront.

If no deal is struck and the country goes into foreclosure, I would prefer it to be because of democrats voting down a compromise to Cut, Cap, and Balance as opposed to voting down an uncompromised Cut, Cap, and Balance bill.

This is about the election in 2012, not winning a battle. Let's be smart about this.

Bob Grant| 7.28.11 @ 8:18PM

Cor:
Goes into DEFAULT that is.

TRK| 7.28.11 @ 9:26PM

The voting public isn't paying as much attention to the details as you think. Most people have never heard of CCB.

Boehner should have stuck with CCB and made it clear that Reid and Obama weren't putting a counter-offer on the table. CCB was designed to elicit an outright rejection. It wouldn't have gotten as many votes as it got if there were any chance it might have passed the Senate. It was pure political cover.

The leverage it provided would have been put to good use if Boehner had simply demanded that Reid respond with his own offer if he didn't like CCB. Reid then either has to come back with an offer, or have it die on his desk so that he looks bad.

Instead Boehner went back with an alternative that was deeply weakened and looks nothing like CCB. It's so weak that it differs from Reid's plan only on one key point. And it differs on a point where Boehner's version looks bad, because S&P has made it clear that Boehner's version is more likely to cause them to drop the credit rating.

If Reid sends it back with that one change, and points out that Boehner's version is more likely to cause our credit rating to drop, and then Boehner kills it, Boehner is the one who ends up looking bad.

Eric Erickson had this right. This is a trap, and that's why Reid is licking his lips at the prospect of voting down Boehner's bill and then passing a modified version for the House to vote on.

Bob Grant| 7.28.11 @ 9:55PM

You know Reid's supposed "cuts" are savings from planned troop withdrawls. This is very specious.

Boehner's plan simply kicks the can down the road for political reasons and forces Obama to explain yet another debt increase request nine months from now. Cut, Cap, and Balance is still on the table and will be debated.

Again. Give Boehner credit for moving Cut, Cap, and Balance along to the senate.

TRK| 7.28.11 @ 10:31PM

Boehner moved CCB to the Senate only because it was DOA. It let House members with a Tea Party constituency say that they voted for it, without having to live with the consequences of it passing of some cuts that would have been political poison.

Boehner's new plan got rid of the unpopular cuts. That's why, in it's first version, it cut so little that it would cost more to implement it than would be saved in the first year.

CalMark| 7.28.11 @ 5:58PM

So much for the change of the culture that Boehner promised. So much for "no more" Pelosi-style legislating. So much for, "We get it."

Let's see: Boehner was Majority Leader during the 2006 debacle, Minority Leader during the 2008 bloodbath, and was even predicting (until the Tea Party bailed out the GOP and made him Speaker) even bigger losses in 2010.

Someone explain to me: how does a clown like this get to be Speaker?

Wayne | 7.28.11 @ 6:06PM

As The CATO institute shows, the Boehner plan has NO Cuts what-so-ever. Its quite obvious why we no longer can trust the GOP.

Al Adab| 7.28.11 @ 6:29PM

Conservatives have never been able to trust the GOP. Time after time the establishment has failed us. The only times the party enjoyed sucess was when Conservatives prevailed in 1980 and 1994.

C Bowen| 7.28.11 @ 6:52PM

Reagan betrayed conservatives and strong armed them to raise the debt ceiling time after time, with each unbalanced budget he promised he wouldn't do to them, and Newt was always an insider who went right to work in betraying the 'revolution' in the Lame Duck session, Dec 1994.

This could yet be the real thing, in our lifetime, thanks to the actual strength of conservatives.

Of course I assume we'll be sold out if they only have to bribe/threaten/blackmail 2 or 3 Reps, but we can dream, and pray, that this is actually, a real moment.

Floyd| 7.28.11 @ 6:16PM

"Real spending" will never ever be cut. Even "cutting" a trillion means an increase in spending of $8-9 trillion over a decade.

Al Adab| 7.28.11 @ 6:31PM

Three year budget freeze. No increases for any agencies. Eliminate funding for private groups like ACORN, SEIU, LaRaza, Planned Parenthood, on and on. End grants and earmarks. Then, each years budget should be based on the prior years' net not on projections of future revenue.

Bob Grant| 7.28.11 @ 7:28PM

Adab. Sounds great. Only problem is this would require a solid majority republican senate and republican president.

How about if we propose legislation that makes it more likely this happens.

Let's get behind the imperfect Boehner bill and look to 2012.

simon templar| 7.28.11 @ 7:28PM

The bottom line is this Boehner is embarassing all us and being played like a fiddle. Let's set aside the merits of any of these bills and pretend they were perfect. The way all this has been handled has been a freaking sad joke in and of itself. Everything from negotiating with ourselves, not insisting the democrats have a plan, taking all the responsibility, not managing the media and our message, and not communicating the situation effectively to the public on prime time after the jerk-in-chief. Then they join with the democrats in trashing and attacking the Tea Party in public. Can this get any stranger and more stupid? Yes.

Bob Grant| 7.28.11 @ 7:39PM

Simon,

Trust me I'm no Boehner fan but the blame should rest on the republican Senate leadership who typically throw sand in the gears.

They are either weak gentlemen who think they are legislating circa 1955 (think McConnell...cough), or they are snakes who sabotage conservative gains (think Graham, McCain, or Cornyn). If we had strong leadership from that chamber, they could have dealt with the 10 or so dems who might have been swayed by "gentle persuasion".

Remember, Boehner managed to get Cut, Cap, and Balance through the house. In this case, he's not the problem.

Gary Edwards| 7.28.11 @ 8:14PM

Speaker Boehner continues to insist on negotiating with himself. CCB solves the crisis and sets us on an unwavering path towards fiscal responsibility. It's passed the House and is but a few votes short in the Senate. Instead of forcing the Senate vote, Boehner continues to insist on tweaking more of the same establishment rot that got us into this predicament.

So, if Mr. Boehner insists on the insanity of negotiating with himself, here are some useful rules for successful negotiation.

#1. He who writes first wins .....

#2. He who speaks last loses .....

Advice to Boehner; the way to win at negotiation, even if caught in the improbable situation of trying to out negotiate yourself, is to shut up and be happy that you wrote (and passed) CCB first.

~ge~

randyinrocklin| 7.28.11 @ 8:26PM

First of all the Republicans blew it from the get go. They should have framed this issue from the time they got sworn in since the big November election. The stimulus did not work, government does not create jobs. We need to grow the economy with economic incentives to businesses to grow. By growing the economy, you get more people paying taxes, thus increasing revenues to the government. Lower taxes on businesses is the key to economic growth, less money to unproductive government to productive capital creating mre jobs. That is how the issue should have been framed from the get go, but we have statis repubics like McCain and McConnell and Boehner and Cantor. The current leadership has lost all credibility with the conservatives of this country. We The People will make sure these guys are voted out!

Wayne | 7.28.11 @ 8:57PM

And remember when some conservative writers were praising Obama, saying he was becoming a centrist? There always seem to be some sabotage at work.