Just flashed across the screens was that the final vote on the tax portion of so-called Plan B had been cancelled tonight because John Boehner did not have enough votes.
What a mess.
You don’t go there unless you are certain you can get there.
Plan C, The Christmas Plan, is the only alternative right now:
I say call his bluff. If a deal which tackles deficits from both revenue and spending can be reached this month, great.
If not, pass a 90 day extension of current tax rates and whatever else is needed to postpone the “cliff,” and go home for Christmas to give time for a Grand Bargain which puts Democratic sacred cows on the table.
Let Harry Reid refuse to bring it to a vote, and Obama refuse to sign it. Their inaction will be the reason for taxes rising for everyone.
Here’s Boehner’s statement:
“The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass. Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff. The House has already passed legislation to stop all of the January 1 tax rate increases and replace the sequester with responsible spending cuts that will begin to address our nation’s crippling debt. The Senate must now act.”
From my post earlier today:
Preserve the status quo pending negotiations on spending reductions and entitlement reforms until after the artificial year-end deadline, which is Obama’s big pressure point, passes.
It will be harder for Harry Reid to table, or Obama to veto, something which preserves the status quo pending further negotiations, even if they know it ultimately weakens their hand.
And if they do nix it, they will not have the smokescreen of claiming Boehner and the Republicans walked away from negotiations.
Update — For those of you who have not been following, Plan C has been my plan since early December, it is not a reaction to the failure tonight. The basic premise is that no agreement can be reached with Obama this calendar year because any deal Obama will offer when he thinks we are under the pressure of a year end “cliff” will be horrible. And sure enough, what little movement the White House has made has been horrible.
Remove the pressure point. Get passed Obama’s trump card, but in a way which makes it very hard for Obama to walk away and also does not concede substantive ground. That way is to kick the ball past New Year’s, because only with passage of more time will Obama have to negotiate on spending and entitlements.
Punting is better than fumbling. It looks like we are fumbling.
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Comments
Perhaps this Republican leadership failure is sufficiently spectacular to result in new leadership. Control of the House of Representatives, and supposedly of “the purse,” and this is the best they can do?
It’s irrelevant what plan anyone comes up with.
The bottom line is Boehner’s amazing negligence in failing to make any real attempt to sell ideas to the public.
He’s become a very bad joke, and at this point, he should be pressured to resign if the GOP as a party hopes to salvage any semblance of self-respect.
Obama is talentless — it is a corrupt media monopoly that props him. He’s a brainless, cardboard cutout. That media monopoly must be smashed, and the only way to do it is to get in their face. We need a Speaker willing to do that, or resign ourselves to the oppression of “Barack Obama.”
On to Plan D- Dump Boehner!!They are no other serious options. Crying Johnny has got to go
He’s not just inappropriately weepy — he’s talentless.
Nor – apparently – can he count.
Boehner is emblematic of the 3 people that Dorothy meets on the way to Oz: the cowardly lion, the heartless tin man and the brainless scarecrow. He has no brains, no balls and no heart. Obama will eat his lunch. And blame Republicans for not having a satisfying lunch.
Your “Plan C” idea is indicative that you should consider running for office someday! You instinctively knew what the only good play was given the ridiculous circumstances brought on by a ridiculous president.
Speaker Bohica will confront the Leftist media with strong language before he accepts Plan C.
That is to say, never.
What a farce. Hard to believe, really, the delusion and cluelessness in our party. The Left is evil, but at least they know how to go about enacting it.
Boehner has a Plan C, it’s just not WAJ’s version. Boehner’s Plan C is the Mayan apocalypse.
I’d love to see both Boehner and McConnell tossed from leadership, but with whom do you replace them, especially the House Speaker?
Two cardboard cutouts would work better than those two useless, clueless bozos.
A cardboard cutout seemed to have worked well for the democrat presidential candidate this year.
A (non) vote of no confidence.
Boehner is toast.
Plan D: Let the house of cards crumble, and let the chips fall where they may. An intervention is now required, and I say let the Sequester be that Intervention.
Tea, overboard. Onward!
Give them 2 bills and three options
1- Exactly what we want.
2- A 90 day extension of status quo
3- The cliff.
Then go home
To Professor Jacobson’s point of
“What a mess.
You don’t go there unless you are certain you can get there.”
I suspect they thought they had the votes then the phones were ringing off the hook in the Congressional offices … could be some “blow-back” (if they heard any) so Congressmen may have been worried about being primaried in 2014.
Replace Boehner with Michelle Bachman. Turn her loose on the press. She should be President.
Bachman ain’t the one. She’s too wrapped up in social issues. Paul Ryan would be a better choice than Bachman. Or Jason Chafetz. He is young, articulate, conservative and smart with no known “baggage” other than he is young, articulate, conservative and smart.
Just keep in mind what the most consequential fight is here. It isn’t Republicans vs. Democrats. It’s the Tea Party vs. the GOP Old Bulls.
Honk!
I am going with plan Z. Off to bed.
And on Monday, I am calling Kenny Marchant’s office and asking them to find a different speaker of the house.
Yeah, he’s my congress critter also and he is going to get a call or an e-mail or both.
the weeping idiot can’t even run the house.
If he is still speaker in 2013, I will give up on the Republicans. They do not deserve my faith and devotion.
I have to say the first decade of the 21st century sucked for me and the 2nd’s not looking much better.
Where’s my flying car? antigravity and a trip to the moon?
Dammit I want to know what happened to the promise of America? We’ve been fighting over nothing while the opportunities for greatness and glory fly by.
And I blame the Progressives and their nit picking soulless leaders.
A young Chinese female (one that miraculously didn’t get aborted) working with Volkswagen, has invented the next best thing to a flying car, a hover mobile…no tires, just hovers over the road.
http://www.mobilemag.com/2012/05/09/volkswagen-hover-car-concept-video/
I’m still holding out hope for the Mayan Apocalypse to hit in a few hours. Gotta be better than 4 more years of Obama.
Having ousted conservatives from important committees, Boehner now reaps what he’s sown. Perhaps a few GOP House members seeing everything slipping away into rinoland have told the majority whip that, sure, you got my vote, but with the intent of really voting no to undermine Boehner in hopes of getting new leadership.
A biggest bad joke is if Eric Cantor replaces Boehner.
Don’t put it past the current GOP leadership to do something that stupid.
As GOP Speaker, we need the kind of big-mouthed, in your face, arrogant bitch that Nancy Pelosi was when she ‘reined.’ It’s the only thing ‘low information’ voters (h/t: Rush Limbaugh) will hear and understand.
Plan C has no more actual chance of success than the failed Plans A and B. After 90 days of negotiations in 2013 that would inevitably prove as fruitless as those that have already transpired between Boehner and Obama, we would be back once again to the same impasse. The Reid-Obama rope-a-dope strategy is to keep the Republicans coming back again and again for more punishment and degradation, which the Democrats are happy to inflict and the masochistic Republicans happy to accept with the greatest of joy. Congressional Republicans for once in their lives should stand on principle and force the president’s hand over his reckless spending, which threatens to bankrupt the nation. The true battle is not over taxes on the wealthy but over the national debt limit. House Republicans must refuse to increase the debt limit without real cuts in federal spending starting now, not empty promises of fake cuts in future spending from an imaginary budget baseline that is allowed to keep growing.
Summation:
1) Dump Boehner asap.
2) Vote into into the position of Speaker: any tough bastard — though Peter King comes to mind.
Bad time to not have the long term services of Allen West available.
Plan C – Definitely should include Newt getting a small office somewhere on the premises and a stipend to be the Republican Strategist.
I phoned my IL Rep yesterday and told him to forget Plan B and to go with Plan “C” as described here.
I’m not sure why Boehner has tea with the WH when Tea Party Tea isn’t being served. Maybe he’s liking Obama Beer instead.
Plan B was the best deal Republicans are ever going to get out of this mess. I don’t understand the conservative opposition, and I am a rock-ribbed anti-tax zealot. You people all realize that everybody’s taxes are going up a lot on January 1 unless a bill is passed, right? And that Obama is perfectly fine with that. He talks about wanting to keep taxes low for the ‘middle class’ but in reality he would be thrilled to get a huge tax increase without having to sign a bill. He also gets a big cut in defense without having to sign a bill. That’s what the cliff means.
Boehner tried to change the calculus with plan B. It was a good tactic. Now Republicans have no leverage except the ultimate doomsday threat of not raising the debt limit — which they don’t have the stomach to use and therefore is useless as a threat. I think certain House conservatives have just shot themselves in the foot big time.
And with respect, your Plan C is useless. Obama won’t go along with the temporary extension. He’d rather have the cliff. Again, if we go off the cliff he gets EVERYTHING he really wants: higher taxes on everyone, a big defense cut (neither of which he has to sign and take responsibility for) the Republicans get the blame for a stock market crash and renewed recession, and Obama can spend the rest of 2013 offering one insincere tax cut for the ‘middle class’ after another.
Boehner figured a way to escape from the box and his own caucus just threw themselves back in and nailed down the lid.
Instead of concentrating on the tax rates, the House needs to introduce spending cuts that will reduce the deficit. Let Obama swing in the breeze.
Boehner: “The House has already passed legislation to stop all of the January 1 tax rate increases and replace the sequester with responsible spending cuts that will begin to address our nation’s crippling debt. The Senate must now act.”
Is this not Plan C, already passed? What am I missing?