Yep. The passage of the Boehner bill last week is what created the opportunity for this monstrosity. The idea last week was that Boehner sold a bill of goods that the House pass his bill and put the pressure on the Senate to act. Well, the Senate already said that bill would be tabled, and was literally right after the House vote. Then Boehner, Reid and Obama put the finishing touches on their crap sandwich over the weekend...putting all the pressure right back on the Republicans in House to HAVE to pass something on the final day. Last week, was the time to stand strong for either CCB or something else.
Yep, looked like Democrats were ready to pounce on voting yes if Republican votes didn’t come through today.
THe need for Boehner to add the BBA requirement to his bill to get it to pass last week is what brought about the bill we have today.
Boehner’s original bill had some slim chance of passing the senate, because it was rather similar to the final deal, except it had better triggers.
But with BBA, it guaranteed that the senate would simply reject it, because the Senate knew the BBA provision gave them political cover to reject it.
Then the Senate couldn’t pass anything either, so they ended up with this bargain.
At least the Senate couldn’t pass their bill, if they had it would be even worse. But this is not as good as Boehner’s original bill (the one before the BBA).