It’s a winner.
The House passed a “clean” debt ceiling bill and sent it on to the Senate, accompanied by a lot of griping.
The vast majority of Republicans voted against the bill, while nearly 200 Democrats carried it across the finish line. 28 Republicans voted “yes.”
Speaker John Boehner, who usually does not vote, voted “yes,” as did Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Whip Kevin McCarthy. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan voted “no.”
Cantor blamed the debt ceiling increase on Democrats. “House Republicans need more responsible and willing partners in Washington so we can finally and boldly address our long term debt crisis,” he said in a statement.
Ryan called the vote a “missed opportunity.”
“We need to pay our bills today and make sure we can pay our bills tomorrow,” Ryan said in a statement after the vote.
The House GOP’s inability to force even a modest fight on the debt ceiling prompted an outcry from conservative groups, including several calls to replace the current House leadership.
Some conservative groups called for Boehner’s head.
The Senate Conservatives Fund says that it is time for House Speaker John Boehner to go and they will keep track of the GOP lawmakers that support their effort to oust him from his leadership post.
The group, which is targeting several incumbent Republicans in primary races this year, said Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, has sold out small government principles on too many occasions and the last straw came this week when House GOP leaders signaled they were going to support a bill to increase the nation’s borrowing limit without attaching any strings to reduce spending.
“There’s only one solution. John Boehner must be replaced as Speaker of the House,” said Matt Hoskins, group’s executive director.
I understand the principle, but they’re wrong.
Predictably, left wing sources have called it a “capitulation” and a “surrender.”
This is a good thing. Boehner has been thrown into the briar patch.
Boehner and the GOP have no leverage against democrats in this battle. None. Obama can just sit back and once again refuse to negotiate and let the government shut down while blaming Republicans. Republicans suffered for that once already:
The budget confrontation that led to a partial government shutdown dealt a major blow to the GOP’s image and has exposed significant divisions between tea party supporters and other Republicans, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The survey highlights just how badly the GOP hard-liners and the leaders who went along with them misjudged the public mood. In the aftermath, eight in 10 Americans say they disapprove of the shutdown. Two in three Republicans or independents who lean Republican share a negative view of the impasse. And even a majority of those who support the tea party movement disapprove.
The absolute last thing the right should want is a repeat performance. Obamacare is in a tailspin, the economy sucks and Obama is unilaterally and illegally rewriting the law in a baldly obvious attempt to stave off the economic damage he knows it will visit on the country and protect vulnerable democrats in the upcoming elections. All efforts should be concentrated on focusing the nation’s attention on that and that alone. If they do anything, it ought to be passing a bill that demands Obama enforce the law as written. That’d be a winner and it would crush democrats.
Cracks in are even appearing in the Media Wall that protects Obama. Ron Fournier says he “sick of defending Obamacare.”
It’s getting difficult and slinking toward impossible to defend the Affordable Care Act. The latest blow to Democratic candidates, liberal activists, and naïve columnists like me came Monday from the White House, which announced yet another delay in the Obamacare implementation.
For the second time in a year, certain businesses were given more time before being forced to offer health insurance to most of their full-time workers. Employers with 50 to 99 workers were given until 2016 to comply, two years longer than required by law. During a yearlong grace period, larger companies will be required to insure fewer employees than spelled out in the law.
Not coincidentally, the delays punt implementation beyond congressional elections in November, which raises the first problem with defending Obamacare: The White House has politicized its signature policy.
The win-at-all-cost mentality helped create a culture in which a partisan-line vote was deemed sufficient for passing transcendent legislation. It spurred advisers to develop a dishonest talking point—”If you like your health plan, you’ll be able to keep your health plan.” And political expediency led Obama to repeat the line, over and over and over again, when he knew, or should have known, it was false.
Major Garrett is tired of it as well:
But it’s time to concede that no one has been more adept or aggressive about delaying and defanging Obamacare than Obama himself. Systematically and with an eye toward his party’s immediate political troubles, Obama has reshaped, photo-shopped, reimagined, and reengineered Obamacare. It all sounds techy and cool and flexible—at least to the administration. To those who must live with and live under the law, the arbitrary is the norm. The only pattern is chaos. Obamacare’s worst enemy is Obama.
Democrats are running ads against Obamacare.
Companies are being forced to swear allegiance to the Chairman.
Let us not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. There is a much bigger prize to be won- the Senate. Screw the debt limit increase. Let it go.
image courtesy of the Washington Times
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.