I am so sick of hearing that Boehner’s in a hard place, or he doesn’t have much leverage.
Sure, he can’t get through tax cuts or even extensions of the Bush tax cuts without Democrat support. But his GOP House could stop the overspending in a minute if the had the whatevers to do so.
They’d claim that they get crucified in the MSM and only have control over a ‘sixth’ of the government. But they’ve the majority, including their most resolute members, in the one chamber with the best power to put a break on spending.
That they haven’t, don’t and won’t do so is criminal negligence on their part.
If they can’t get their message across to the electorate, then they should seek the help they need for better messaging. I don’t think anyone here could reasonably claim that they a) are effective, or b) even bother to make much effort to get their message across. They even have a baseline of polls showing a super-majority of voters backing spending cuts, which is more than those who back tax increases.
Yes, you can say that everyone backs cuts in the abstract, but they object to cuts in the specific. Still, the GOP has two years to govern according to their principles before and whether they have the opportunity for reelection. And, again, the GOP have done nothing effective in terms of communication since a brief moment with Gingrich and then Reagan before him. The tea party success was overwhelmingly outside of and despite the GOP party apparatus.
Same here. Boehner has the only leverage that counts - raising the debt ceiling. It is the only thing - I meant the ONLY thing - that matters to Obama. Yet Boehner surrenders it first.
I still cringe when I think back sixteen months ago. Boehner caved then as well by raising the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion. And he got zero in return. ZERO! The best thing Boehner can do at this point for the sake of the country is to hold the debt ceiling where it is and let Obama fend for every single dollar he wants to spend. Only then will America wake up to what is going on.