Posted on 12/20/2012 5:16:50 PM PST by kristinn
Capitol Hill reporters on Twitter writing Speaker Boehner has dropped Plan B fiscal cliff vote tongiht after revolt from House Republican caucus. House will recess until after Christmas.
After raucus closed dooor House GOP meeting, Boehner says House has already passed bills to cut spending and taxes to avert fiscal cliff and the ball is the court of the Senate and President Obama.
What good is it to have principles at all when they change with the situation?
Please. I want a serious answer.
"With this move the GOP has handed Obama a huge victory. We get to go over the cliff and he gets his huge tax increases and cuts in defense sepnding. As a result we go into recession that he can blame on the recalcitrant Republican who wouldn’t raise taxes on millionaires. Nice work fellas!"
Sigh. If you paid any attention to what was really going on, you would realize that the Obamamedia was already gearing up in full gear to attack Plan B. Plan B wasn't a brilliant strategy move to catch an unwary Obama and the Dems off-guard, but a disguised "Right-wing wish-list" designed to "cut food stamps for the poor" and "raise taxes on the middle class", etc....
And after Obama would've repeated these talking points a billion times (without any counter-response from the GOP), the low-information crowd would be right in his corner. Stop being so naive.
She won big when members of the right decided to sacrifice their ‘rich’ brethren to save their own skin.
That’s no different than how the dems do things.
Class warfare is not a conservative value. Voting more money for you at the expense of another is not a conservative value. It’s a Democrat value. No way around that.
NO new taxes does not mean .02% is OK. It means NO taxes.
Again, the GOP spent 2 years doing nothing and yes, now people will pay. And again, put the blame where it belongs. With Bohner who led his party to the edge of the cliff, stood by and did nothing to stop anyone from going over.
I'm not cheering it on, I'm just watching it happen and commenting. Big difference.
/johnny
Gingrich: Conservatives Will Have to Accept Marriage 'Equality'
Boner wilts!
Woo hoo!
january 1 is the day of truth when the big lie that defeating B defeated tax increases (that B raised taxes) is exposed.
Happy New Year :)
We just tried the “big idea” campaign. How did that work out? People love spending, it’s not enough to just say cut spending.
Taxes are going up and the sooner we adapt to the facts on the ground the better.
Yup/Makes me sick.
I should have stuck with my initial belief about him and said no to him too. But I didn’t. Now I regret it. But it just reinforces my position about sticking to principle. Because Newt is what happens when we don’t.
It’s a bittersweet happiness. Because this had to happen to wake people up. I hope we don’t screw it up.
But I am a lot happier than I would be if all our guys just helped Bohner go further left.
No one ever promised this would be free or easy.
Now there you are affirming my point in the above comment, that the REAL idea to defeat B was to raise taxes to teach people a lesson. That is exactly what I posted.
This only works for the positive if Obama gets the blame.
If the GOP gets the blame then we probably will haveSpeaker Pelosi in 2015 taking all our guns away, with the higher taxes, and DOMA repealed, .
Discussing bringing it to a vote and then failing is a disaster and to think it’s not is incredibly naive. Here’s part of the conventional wisdom making the rounds today (from Rich Lowry and NR)
A couple of more points:
1) The political advantage of Plan B was that it could have shifted the focus to Senate Democrats and at least set them up to take some more of the blame if we go over the cliff. Now Republicans will be even more vulnerable to getting blamed.
2) If part of what President Obama was after was Republican humiliation and disarray, it’s going better than even he could have hoped.
3) It’s possible to envision a scenario where, in theory, going over the cliff enhances GOP leverage. But the emphasis is on in theory. As soon as we go over the cliff, Senate Republicans will almost certainly start peeling off and House Republicans will be even more isolated. Then, they will likely see defections in their own ranks, too, and buckle in a pell-mell retreat.
4) Boehner is in an intolerable position. Either he has the confidence of his conference or he doesn’t. It was a risk to announce Plan B before he knew he had the votes. But if his members don’t have his back in such a high-stakes situation, well then, something eventually has to give.
5) The GOP leadership seemed united on this one, but there’s nothing like a debacle to create an every-man-for-himself dynamic. I wouldn’t be surprised to see tensions begin to emerge between the camps of Speaker Boehner and Whip Kevin McCarthy.
Analysis from ISI:
FAILURE OF PLAN B RAISES ODDS OF NO DEAL
The odds of going over the fiscal cliff rose last night then Speaker John Boehner pulled his Plan B from the House floor last night after it was clear he was going to lose the vote. The House adjourned and the Senate won’t take any action on the fiscal cliff until both return next week. Futures were off sharply right after the announcement last night that the vote was not going to happen.
Obviously, there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding what happens next. What we do know is that the already low odds of a grand bargain before year-end are lower after last night. So whether we go over the fiscal cliff or Congress passes some version of the Senate tax bill, the odds are now over 80% that the sequester will kick in, the payroll tax cut will expire, and the scheduled fiscal tightening for 2013 will exceed $400 billion.
Boehner has scheduled a press conference for 10:00am today, so we will probably get an idea of his intentions at that time. In a brief written statement last night Boehner said the leadership didn’t have the votes for Plan B and, “Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on
legislation to avert the fiscal cliff.”
The reason Boehner moved to Plan B in the first place is that he became convinced that President Obama will not support the kind of entitlement changes that are needed to win support for a broader deal from a substantial number of Republican members. In Boehner’s view, despite all the media coverage about how close Obama and Boehner are to a deal, they were not on track to get a grand bargain because of their differences over spending and entitlements.
Even though roughly 85% of Boehner’s caucus was prepared to support him last night and a grand bargain would only need the support of about 40% of the GOP caucus to pass the House (presumably most Democrats would vote for it), the unmistakable impression everyone will draw from last night’s vote is that Boehner can’t rally his troops around his leadership. To the extent the White House has doubts about whether Boehner can deliver his end of a deal, those concerns will only be heightened and that obviously makes Obama less likely to make more concessions to get a grand bargain. Of course, the weakened negotiating leverage of Boehner, and Republicans generally, also gives Democrats less of a political incentive to make concessions to get a grand bargain.
That leaves the Senate tax bill as the leading alternative to going over the fiscal cliff entirely. The reason the GOP
leadership pushed for Plan B is they believed, correctly in our view, that it would have put them in a stronger position to reach a deal on a narrow tax bill where the tax increases started at around $500,000 or more. If Obama wants to get a compromise on a limited bill, he could get one easily by agreeing on a threshold of something less than $500,000. Such a bill would also likely include an AMT patch and perhaps items such as an extension of unemployment benefits and a doc fix. But it is less likely Democrats will agree to such a compromise after last night’s events.
If Obama won’t budge, then House Republicans are probably stuck with two options, both of which are highly undesirable for rank-and-file Republicans. Either pass nothing and go over the cliff or bring the Senate tax bill to the House floor and it allow it to pass mainly with Democratic votes. We don’t believe Boehner’s speakership is materially at risk, and bringing the Senate bill to the House floor would not jeopardize it. Many of the Republicans who opposed Plan B won’t object to bringing the Senate tax bill to the House floor. They oppose the bill, but they feel most strongly that they and other Republicans should not support any tax increases. The overwhelming majority of Republicans believe they will be blamed if the US goes over the fiscal cliff, so we think Republicans will end up agreeing to allow the Senate tax bill to pass the House.
Thank you for being rational.
I am a conservative and my conservative principles say that we raise taxes on no one. But that argument was lost when Obama was re-elected and the Demoncrats kept the Senate. We now have a choice between raising taxes on everyone by doing nothing (which would be horrible) or raising tax rates on some (which would be bad).
If Boehner were smart (I know) and had the nerve (I said, I know) he should get the House to pass two bills to send to the Senate. One would contain the Republican plan of no changes to tax rates, limit deductions on some upper-earners and cut some spending (including entitlement reform) (and I mean CUT, not reduce the rate of growth). The second bill would be much of what the President says he wants - raise tax rates on those making more than $400K or $500K, some phoney spending cuts. Pass the second bill by having most (or all) of the House Republicans vote “present” and let the Dems pass the bill.
After passing those bills, adjourn for the year. Go on every talk show, news show, radio show, etc. (including sending some female Republican to The View and some very articulate people to Jon Stewart’s show, David Letterman’s show, Tavis Smiley’s show, Univision talk shows and Jay Leno’s show). When on those shows say “The President and the Democrats in the Senate have three options - they can do nothing, shove us over the fiscal cliff and raise taxes on everybody, which they have said would lead to another recession. They can pass what the President said he wanted, but that we think will hurt the economy. In either of those cases, they own the economy and whatever happens. The third option is to pass our balanced approach, which avoids tax increases on everyone and devastating cuts to our Defense budget. In that case, we all will enjoy a better economy, with credit going to everyone.”
My guess is that Obama and Reid will blink. If they don’t, we are no worse off than we are now. We will have another rescession and can argue about whose fault it is until the next election.
"The political advantage of Plan B was that it could have shifted the focus to Senate Democrats and at least set them up to take some more of the blame if we go over the cliff."
As I pointed out in my comment, the media was not going to give the GOP that luxury. And not only that, but Harry Reid would just come up with some new excuse- which would then be promoted in full force by the MSM- and all it would reveal was the sad spectacle that Republicans were fine with raising taxes on job-creators... in return for nothing.
I hate computer crashes. Lost a long post so I’ll encapsulate.
You have said a lot of things. Most of it wrong, mucj of it no different from a class warfare democrat.
If taxes rise, it is the fault of the dems and the GOPe. Conservatives voted for no tax. Whether or not anyone wants to participate in reality or not is their choice. But in this case, the conservatives won. That victory will probably hurt.
The people it hurts should have put more effort in stopping the Dems and holding Bohner to the party platform for the last 2 years.
Sucks for those of us on the correct side of the issue, but we are not going to make any gain without the pain that mandates it.
Uh, what am I missing?
There is no other way for a Senate bill to pass the House unless a majority votes for it, and the Democrats are in the minority. Therefore, certain Republicans would have to be guaranteed to vote for it to go along with all the Democrats who would vote for it.
Oh great...here’s a massive Democrat vote in lockstep like the little Bolsheviks they are, but lookee here, there’s a few Republicans who vote with the Bolsheviks, thereby causing it to pass and be foisted on America. When we KNOW for a fact that it is wrong on so many levels.
I guess some people don’t have to PUT ON blinders, they just live with them on all the time...
“There is no other way for a Senate bill to pass the House unless a majority votes for it, and the Democrats are in the minority. Therefore, certain Republicans would have to be guaranteed to vote for it to go along with all the Democrats who would vote for it.”
No that is exactly what is going to happen. Some GOP senators are going to cave after we go over the cliff and they will pass a bi-partisan deal in the Senate. that will cause enough republicans in the House to break and join the Dems to pass a plan.
Like it or not. The House GOP led by Boehner marginalized themselves out of a deal with that fiasco last night. Doesn’t mean it was wrong to “stand on principle”. It’s just a fact.
That’s all fine and dandy but they didn’t need to hand the Dems and the MSM the weapon with which to bludgeon themselves.
"That’s all fine and dandy but they didn’t need to hand the Dems and the MSM the weapon with which to bludgeon themselves."
The Dems are already five steps ahead of you. Do you seriously think that the Dems wouldn't use the fact that Republicans would've been the only party on record to vote for increasing taxes on small businesses against them in 2014 races? Do you remember "Read My Lips?" at all?...
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