I am still trying to understand what the House GOP was supposed to do. They had one chance to set the terms with the Plan B option. That was killed in pursuit of purism. So, what else? I am totally lost here.
“I am still trying to understand what the House GOP was supposed to do.”
If there were Patriots in the GOP House they would never have allowed Harry Reid to get away without passing a budget. They would have used the appropriations power of the House, even if it meant shutting down the government. Simply said they would have passed a responsible budget with dramatic cuts to the bureaucracy and programs. Ideally they would have passed a balanced budget and sent it to the Senate. If Reid refused to bring the budget to a vote, the government would shut down for lack of money since the Constitution requires all appropriations to originate in the House. If Reid brought the budget up and it failed, the House could refuse to send another appropriations bill. The Senate would then be a position of either passing the bill or letting the government shut down. Ultimately the Senate would pass it. It might take a few weeks and one or two rounds of social security checks not going out, but if the House held firm, the Senate would have to pass the bill. Same thing with the President. Once the Senate passed the bill, if the President vetoed it and the House held firm, public pressure would ultimately force him to sign the bill so the government would have funding.
Exercising the power would require the Republicans to stand firm in the face of a huge media and public firestorm. The Democrats would scream they were killing seniors, children, and destroying the planet. However, the Constitution gives the House the upper hand on the budget and if it holds firm, both the Senate and the President have to come to terms with the House.
Republicans are going to get blamed by the press and the Democrats. They might as well do something worth getting blamed for. It requires courage to stand tall against the special interests and non producers. I don’t think it requires any more courage than it did for George Washington and his ragged army to cross the Delaware river the night of December 25/26, 1776 or the US Marines to hold out on Guadalcanal in 1942 or the allied forces to storm the beaches on Normandy in June 1944. The Republic is in peril and it is time for the House Republicans to man up and fight the tyrant even if it costs them the next election. Unfortunately John Boehner and Eric Cantor have shown no sign they have the courage to use their constitutional powers to do the right thing for our nation. By refusing to use their constitutional powers they are abdicating the fiscal policy of this country to Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and the Democrat Party.
Here's the thing, Boehner has made one bad deal after another starting in the 2008 lame duck session. He's allowed himself to get rolled 3, 4 or is it 5 times. Boehner never used the constitutional power of the House of Representatives to stop the onslaught. He's done nothing.
The fact that in this situation, it got to Plan B, is proof of Boehner's failure.
Plan B was the end of a process, not the beginning, so don't start your analysis with Plan B. Don't start with Casey swinging and missing for strike three. Look to the beginning. Plan B was the last straw even for "moderate" Republicans.