Ted Cruz - "Lucifer In The Flesh"

(Image is from Down With Tyranny.)

Ted Cruz has a small following among the most fundamentalist and bigoted evangelicals, but he is almost universally despised by his colleagues in Washington -- including his Republican colleagues. If you doubt that, just look at what former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner had to say when asked about Cruz last Wednesday:

"Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life."

Boehner's Parting Gift To America -- A Two-Year Budget Deal

The caricature above, by DonkeyHotey, is of the primary architects of the new budget (and debt ceiling bill) -- but I believe one played a more important part than the others. That person is John Boehner. I haven't had many good things to say about Speaker Boehner in the last two years, but I believe he stepped up in the "lame duck" days of his speakership and did something a lot of his Republican cohorts are loathe to do -- he compromised for the good of the country.

Boehner could have set back and let the new Speaker (Paul Ryan) deal with the debt ceiling and budget, and that would either have resulted in problems for Ryan or a shutdown of the federal government (following a default). He didn't do that. He tossed the "Hastert Rule" out the window (which said no bill could come to the House floor without majority Republican support), and reached out to House Democrats to help him pass the new budget.

And he did get it passed -- on a 266 to 167 vote (where 79 Republicans joined 187 Democrats to approve the budget bill, while all 167 "no" votes came from Republicans. In getting the bill to the floor and passed, Boehner also accomplished some other things. He gave Paul Ryan time to establish himself as Speaker before taking on issues as tough as the debt ceiling and budget. He saved his party from being blamed for a government shutdown in the next election. And he gave one last poke in the eye to the Freedom caucus (i.e., teabagger reps) -- the group responsible for his ouster. I suspect he may have especially enjoyed the latter.

Is this a good budget bill? No. But it is probably the best compromise that could be accomplished, and it's a lot better than I thought could be done. Neither side is happy with the bill, and both sides get some of what they wanted -- and that probably means it's a good compromise. The Democrats get an additional $80 billion in the bill, and the Republicans get to spend half of that $80 billion on defense (with most probably going to corporations in the military-industrial complex).

The best part of the bill is that both the debt ceiling and the budget is settled for the rest of President Obama's term in office. The debt ceiling won't have to be dealt with again until the Spring of 2017, and the budget is good through September of 2017.

I think kudos are also in order for President Obama -- who was willing to compromise, but stood firm on rejecting an austerity budget from the Republicans. Thanks to President Obama (and Speaker Boehner), we now have a budget bill that is not perfect, but is one both sides can live with -- and that's a pretty remarkable accomplishment.

The bill must now be approved by the Senate, and Rand Paul has already said he will filibuster it. But Majority Leader McConnell doesn't want a shutdown (which is the alternative to passing this bill), and I don't think he'll have any trouble getting the 60 votes needed to end that filibuster.

Nearly 7 Out Of 10 People Say NO To Another Shutdown

The far-right Republicans in Congress are poised to shutdown the government again. And the issue they chose to force this shutdown over is the defunding of Planned Parenthood. These politicians know that no government money is used to fund abortions -- not at Planned Parenthood, or anywhere else. There is already a federal law to prevent that -- and the Republicans should know that, because they are the ones that passed that law.

But this is not about Planned Parenthood. It is a political game designed to appeal to the evangelicals and teabaggers in the GOP base. These far-right Republicans actually seem to think that most Republicans (and most Americans) like their position, and would be willing to endure another government shutdown to defund Planned Parenthood. They are wrong on both counts.

While their actions may please the evangelicals and teabaggers, it does not represent the position of most Republicans (or most religious people in this country). It turns out that 56% of Republicans oppose a shutdown over this issue, and even larger majorities of religious people oppose a shutdown (64% of protestants and 66% of catholics). And those majorities are also apparent with both sexes, all races, and all age groups.

The far-right Republicans are playing a dangerous game by trying to force a government shutdown -- a political game that could further damage their party on election day. Speaker of the House John Boehner is their best hope to avoid that. By resigning, he is now free to form a coalition of right-wing Republicans (who don't want a shutdown) and Democrats to take the Planned Parenthood defunding out of the budget bill. That coalition could probably pass that, and that amended budget bill could probably pass in the Senate.

Will Boehner step forward and get that done? We'll know very soon, because time is running out.

The chart above is from the Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between September 17th and 21st of a random national sample of 1,574 registered voters, and has a margin of error of 2.5 points.

Boehner Resignation Could Be Good (In The Short Term)

By now, if you keep up with politics at all, you've probably heard that Speaker of the House John Boehner is resigning both his speakership and his House seat at the end of October. Some people (on both the left and the right) are celebrating, and others are fearful that this will just bring bigger problems for Congress (without solving anything).

I am in the latter group. I think it is terrible for the Republican Party, because he is likely to be replaced by a person even farther to the right -- or someone who will continue to have problems with those on the far-right. Neither is good for that party. They will be viewed as even more extreme (and the American people hate extremism) or they will continue to fight amongst themselves.

It will also be bad for Congress -- because Congress will continue to remain the dysfunctional body that it has become known for. It will remain a body that prefers to play political fames, rather than a body capable of compromise for the good of the country.

Having said all that, I do believe there may be a small silver lining to that dark cloud -- at least in the short term. It could give Speaker Boehner the freedom to act on his own and prevent a government shutdown.

Boehner had promised that there would be no government shutdown. But things got out of hand in Congress. The teabagger congressmen on the far-right were able to include in the budget bill a provision to defund Planned Parenthood (which would hurt health care for many women). They knew full well that this had no chance of passing the Senate, and if by some miracle it did, would be vetoed by the president. But they did it anyway. They want government shutdown to please the teabagger extremists in their base.

This put Speaker Boehner between a rock and a hard place. He had only two choices -- break his promise of no government shutdown, or take the Republicans who were with him and join the Democrats to prevent the shutdown. That latter option would have resulted in a no-confidence vote that probably would have ended his speakership (because there would have been enough votes on the far-right to deny him a majority, and it is unlikely that Democrats would have voted to save him).

His resignation frees him of this dilemma. He can now appeal to Democrats to help him (and the anti-shutdown Republicans with him) to help him pass a budget bill without the odious Planned Parenthood provision -- and that bill would prevent the impending government shutdown. While the far-right would not like that, they would have no recourse against him.

Will Boehner now act to stop the government shutdown. I hope he does. The ball is now back in his court, and he can do that if he wants to keep his "no shutdown" promise. I think he will. We'll find out in the next few days.

(The caricature of Speaker Boehner above is by DonkeyHotey.)

GOP Ready To Shut Down Homeland Security Department

When the Republicans won control of both houses of Congress, new Majority Leader Mitch McConnell assured everyone that there would be no shutdowns of government. He either lied, or misjudged the insanity of the far right-wing of his own party -- because that is exactly what the Republicans are preparing to do (at least partially).

With their new majorities, the GOP thought they finally had the power to force the president and the Democrats to do what they wanted. And they decided to start by forcing President Obama to do away with two executive orders he issued -- the first in 2012 that exempted "Dreamers" (immigrant children brought here when very young and raised in the U.S.) from deportation, and the second in 2014 that exempted the families of those Dreamers from being deported.

The Republicans (and their xenophobic teabagger base) have never liked those executive orders, and they thought they now had the power to get rid of them -- and the vehicle they chose to do that with was the funding of the Department of Homeland Security. When the budget for 2015 was passed, the Republicans refused to include that department in the budget. Instead, they passed a separate funding bill in the House for Homeland Security -- a bill that included provisions to overturn both of the president's executive orders.

They obviously thought the functions of this department was so critical (including Border Patrol, Customs enforcement, and airport security) that the Democrats (and the president) wouldn't dare to stop the bill, and let the department's funding cease (which will happen at the end of this month). They were wrong.

President Obama has said he will veto the bill if it reaches his desk. But it doesn't look like it will get that far. Senate Democrats have filibustered the bill, and it doesn't look like there is any chance of stopping that filibuster as long as the "poison pill" provisions are in the bill. The Democrats are demanding a clean bill -- without the provisions that would overturn the president's executive orders.

The Republicans have put themselves between a rock and a hard place. They must either pass a clean bill, or allow the Department of Homeland Security to shut down at the end of this month -- and neither option is acceptable to their teabagger base. Speaker Boehner could probably scrape together enough GOP votes to pass the bill with Democratic help, but that would just anger the teabagger members of his House GOP caucus -- and he is already having a very hard time trying to keep those members in line.

It's starting to look like that department will be shut down at the end of this month. House teabaggers say they are willing to allow that to happen, and Boehner says he is also willing to allow the shutdown. They still seem to think the Democrats and the president will blink first in this political game of "chicken". I don't.  I think the department will be defunded and shut down -- at least for a few days. Then the Republicans will fold and pass a clean bill. After all, this is one of their favorite government departments and they won't let it be shut down for long.

It's going to take some public anger (at least for a few days) to give Boehner the political courage to defy his teabagger element in the House, but it will happen. All the Democrats have to do is stand fast.

(The caricature above of GOP congressional leaders is by DonkeyHotey.)

Public Doesn't Like Boehner's Invitation of Netanyahu

If you keep up with politics at all, then you know that Speaker Boehner invited Israel's Netanyahu to speak to Congress with consulting with the president first. While that may not be illegal, it is a violation of accepted protocol and was very disrespectful. The two leaders colluded to do that because they are afraid the president was close to ironing out a deal with Iran -- a deal that would keep nuclear weapons out of that country and put the two nations on a friendlier footing.

That is something neither Netanyahu nor Boehner (and other right-wingers in Congress) want to see happen. Both of these men get a lot of political mileage by keeping Iran as an enemy, and keeping the public in their respective countries scared of what Iran might do. But they made a serious misjudgment.

Many Israelis are unhappy with Netanyahu because they see his siding with a single political party in the U.S. as endangering the friendly relations between the two countries. And this has turned out to be an embarrassment for Boehner also. Many Democrats are refusing to attend the scheduled speech -- and if enough of them stay away, Netanyahu will be speaking to a nearly half-empty room.

But Boehner's problems go deeper than that. The chart above is from a recent YouGov Poll -- done between February 4th and 8th of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of about 4 points. It shows that 47% of Americans disapprove of Boehner's invitation, while only 30% approve. He may have made his base happy, but he angered a lot more people.

A Bit Of (Unintended) Humor To Brighten Your Day

(This cartoon image of Louie Gohmert is by Matt Wuerker at Politico.com.)

If you are like me, the thought of Republicans taking control of both houses of Congress has put you in a depressing tailspin -- so I thought we could all use a little humor. And the craziest man in Congress, the man who never passes up an opportunity to say something stupid for the cameras, the man who makes other extremist Republicans nervous when he opens his mouth, has provided it for us.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) has announced his candidacy for Speaker of the House, and he has even created a web page to promote his candidacy. I provided a link to that web page just in case you think that couldn't possibly be true. To Gohmert, John Boehner is a flaming liberal, and he even had the temerity to call him a "dictator". Saying as many as 30% of congressional Republicans could bolt from the GOP if Boehner is not ousted, Gohmert told Fox News:

“They are so fed up that we are not fighting for what we said, and if we don’t show them that, it’s going to devastate this country.” 

Gohmert says he doesn't expect to be elected on the first ballot, but believes the party will turn to him for "leadership" after three or four rounds of voting.

Those of us who live in the world of reality have long suspected that Gohmert lives in a dream world of his own making -- a world where facts don't matter and nothing is too insane to be uttered by a public official. If you doubt that, then peruse these examples of Gohmert's rhetoric:

(On the IRS)
"We can put Obama on the defensive just by completely getting rid of the Internal Revenue code." 

(On terror babies)
"[The children] could be raised and coddled as future terrorists [and] twenty, thirty years down the road, they can be sent in to help destroy our way of life."

(On muslims in the Obama administration)
 "This administration has so many Muslim Brotherhood members that have influence that they just are making wrong decisions for America."

(On the oil pipeline)
"So when [caribou] want to go on a date, they invite each other to head over to the pipeline. ... So my real concern now [is] if oil stops running through the pipeline ... do we need a study to see how adversely the caribou would be affected if that warm oil ever quit flowing?"

(On the shooting in Aurora, Colorado)
"You know what really gets me, as a Christian, is to see the ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs, and then some senseless crazy act of terror like this takes place. ... We've threatened high school graduation participations, if they use God's name, they're going to be jailed ... I mean that kind of stuff. Where was God? What have we done with God? We don't want him around. I kind of like his protective hand being present."

(On cutting food stamps)
"It's not evil to cut food stamps. Some poor people are obese, so this will help them."

(On same-sex marriage)
"The problem is. . .when you say it's not a man and a woman anymore, then why not have three men and one woman, or four women and one man, or why not somebody has a love for an animal?"

(On the Attorney General testifying before a House committee)
"I cannot have a witness challenge my character! The Attorney General will not cast aspersions on my asparagus!"

Now I don't expect Louie Gohmert has a snowball's chance of surviving the Sahara Desert in the summer to be elected Speaker, but I find the idea of it very humorous -- and it shows that he still has no connection to the real world.

No Honeymoon Period For Republican Leaders

One would have expected after the huge victory they had in this latest election, that Republican leaders would be able to bask in the approval of their own party's base -- at least until the 114th Congress gets down to business next January. But that doesn't seem to be happening.

During only the second week after the election (from November 10th to November 17th), the approval of the Republican congressional leadership has dropped significantly. The approval rating during those seven days for John Boehner has dropped 12 points (while disapproval rose by 10 points). And the numbers for Mitch McConnell were even worse, with approval dropping by 14 points (and disapproval climbing by 12 points).

These numbers are from YouGov Polls taken between November 8th and 10th and between November 15th and 17th (of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of about 4 points). Note that the shifts in approval and disapproval far exceed the polls' margin of error.

The same is not true for Democrats (see chart below). The approval and disapproval numbers for Democratic leaders by their own base has remained pretty steady.

Boehner / McConnell Say They Will Repeal Obamacare

Well, it didn't take long for the Republicans to go back to their old obstructionist ways. Instead of trying to lay out an agenda of compromise that both Congress and the president could agree on to get our economy moving again, they have decided to make the repeal of Obamacare one of their early objectives.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal published on Wednesday, just one day after the election, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell accused the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) of killing jobs and hurting health care in the U.S.

Of course those charges are ludicrous. Obamacare has been responsible for many thousands of new jobs in the health care industry (because hospitals are now getting paid for care they once had to write off as a loss), and no one can point to any credible evidence that Obamacare has cost jobs in any other industry.

And how has heal care been hurt -- when millions more Americans now have health insurance and can get the care that once was denied to them (especially preventative care). The fact is that the overwhelming majority of the health care industry thinks Obamacare has been good -- both for them, and for the millions who now have access to health care.

There is no way they can actually repeal Obamacare. The president has already said:

"On health care, there are certainly some lines I'm going to draw. Repeal of the law I won't sign. Efforts that would take away health care from the 10 million people who now have it and the millions more who are now eligible to get it, we're not going to support."

And he added that he would also not sign any bill eliminating the individual mandate.

I think McConnell understands this, because he said they would probably try to repeal it a bit at a time. That's not going to work either though. President Obama will veto anything that substantially hurts the Affordable Care Act -- and both houses of Congress have enough Democrats to prevent the override of a presidential veto.

I sort of hope the Republicans do try to damage Obamacare. They won't be able to do it, and it will remind the voters of just how out-of-touch the Republican officials really are. A clear majority of Americans have been saying they don't want Obamacare to be repealed for months now -- and the longer it stays in effect, the more people will realize that (while it didn't cure everything in our broken system) it definitely improved health care in this country.

Bring it on Boehner / McConnell. You may have a majority in both houses of Congress, but this is a fight you cannot win -- and could easily hurt you in 2016.

(The image above is by DonkeyHotey.)

Bernie On Speaker Boehner

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has a valid point here. Speaker Boehner has not acted in the best interests of the House of Representatives, the government, the people of the United States, or his own political party. He has let himself be ruled by a tiny minority of his own Republican caucus, because he doesn't have the strength, intelligence, or political skill to control that caucus. And because that minority controls him (instead of him controlling the GOP caucus), he has refused several times now to even allow a vote on the Senate version of the continuing resolution -- in spite of the fact that the Senate has voted on every continuing resolution sent to it by the House. Boehner is the weakest and least effective Speaker of the House that this country has ever had.

Ted Cruz - De Facto Leader Of The GOP ?

(The cartoon image above is by John Branch in the San Antonio Express-News.)

Yesterday I did a post about how the teabagger movement is losing support among Americans -- having dropped 10 points in the last three years, from 32% in 2010 to 22% in 2013. I said the teabaggers may be becoming irrelevant on the national level. I believe that is true, but don't take that to mean they no longer have any power. While they are losing support nationwide, they still have a strangle-hold on the Republican Party in many states -- so much so that they can dictate what they want the party to do (and many in Congress will follow their lead).

The new darling of the teabagger right is Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas). While he has irritated his fellow senators and been painted as a joke by many in the media, he is something of a hero to the radical right for his championing of their outlandish policies and theories. And a case can be made that he is now the de facto leader of the Republican Party -- since he is the current teabagger hero, and those teabaggers control the Republican Party.

Public Policy Polling has done a new survey (conducted on September 25th and 26th of 743 Republican primary voters nationwide, with a 3.6 point margin of error). That survey shows that Cruz has vaulted into a small lead as the most popular choice of Republicans for the 2016 presidential nomination.

In addition, he is much more popular with the Republican base voters than other Republican leaders -- like Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and John McCain. And if he is that much more popular than the supposed leaders of the party, that means he has more influence with the party's base. That makes him a party leader, perhaps the party leader (whether the other national party figures like it or not).

Note that charts below (made from information in the PPP survey). They show that Cruz's influence in the party has grown substantially. That should worry other Republican leaders, because Cruz is on the far right-wing fringe and will lead the party even further to the right (and away from mainstream America). And if he does that, it will tend to alienate most voters on the national level, and cause the GOP to do even worse on the national level than they did in 2008 and 2012.

As a progressive, I personally despise the politics of Ted Cruz. But I welcome him taking leadership reins in the Republican Party, because I believe that Cruz (and his nutty policies) will scare the hell out of most voters. And the best thing that could happen for Democrats is for Cruz to be the 2016 nominee of the GOP.

All 4 Congressional Leaders Very Unpopular

Several polls have shown that Congress as a whole is very unpopular these days. In the last few months, their approval ratings have been below 15% (and the disapproval ratings very high). The folks at Gallup decided to find out if that congressional unpopularity also applied to the leaders of both parties there, and not surprisingly, it does.

The recent Gallup Poll was taken between September 5th and 8th of a nationwide sample of about 794 adults, with a 4 point margin of error. The poll showed that all four congressional leaders, Mitch McConnell & Harry Reid in the Senate and John Boehner & Nancy Pelosi in the House, are not well liked by the general public and all four have upside-down approval ratings -- McConnell (35%-47%), Reid (33%-53%), Boehner (37%-54%), and Pelosi (39%-51%).

The poll also showed that all four were pretty equally disliked by Independent voters. But three of those leaders can at least claim some support from their own political party -- with the numbers for Boehner at 48%-44% among Republicans, while Reid has a rating of 47%-40% & and Pelosi has a rating of 65%-24% among Democrats. It is Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Minority Leader who has the worst numbers, being upside-down even with the members of his own party at 33%-47%.

This could well show why his poll numbers for his re-election campaign in Kentucky have been so low (showing him trailing his Democratic opponent by a few points). Politics is a lot harder when the voters in your own political party don't like you (by a huge 14 point margin).

Shutdown Looms As Boehner Gives In To The Congressional Teabaggers

(This caricature of Speaker John Boehner is by the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)

Speaker of the House John Boehner was hoping to avoid a government shutdown, knowing that the Republican brand would again be damaged by it. He had wanted to please everyone by sending two separate bills to the Senate -- one to continue funding the government past the September 30th deadline, and a second to defund Obamacare (knowing this second bill would die an ugly death in the Senate).

Unfortunately, that was not good enough for the teabagger element in the House. They wanted more than another anti-Obamacare bill that could be easily tossed out by the Senate (as more than 30 such bills have already been killed there). They demanded that the two bills be combined, with no funding of the government past September 30th unless all funds for Obamacare were eliminated. And Boehner, who hasn't had control of the Republican caucus in the House for quite a while now, gave in to those teabaggers.

He has announced that the bill to continue funding the government will have a clause that eliminates all funding for Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) when it goes to the Senate. Of course that bill has absolutely zero chance of passing the Senate (and if it did, it would be vetoed by the president). There is no way the Democrats or the president can agree to defund (or repeal) the Affordable Care Act -- and that means the chances of another government shutdown have grown much larger.

The Republicans are counting on being able to blame the Democratic-controlled Senate (or the president) for the shutdown of the government. But that's not going to happen. The public knows the Republicans will be to blame, and because of that the Republicans are going to once again put themselves between a rock and a hard place. If they don't back down, the public will blame them for the problems caused by a government shutdown -- and when they do back down (as they will have to do), their teabagger base will be angered (and possibly punish them in next year's primaries).

And the really crazy part of this whole mess is that even if they are forced to back down, they might try the whole shutdown thing again next month, when the debt ceiling will need to be raised. The teabagger caucuses of the House and Senate seem to be living in a dream world. They actually think they can get the president and the Democrats to give in on Obamacare, and either defund or repeal it. They are wrong. Although it is not a perfect solution to health care reform, Obamacare is the signature accomplishment of the Obama administration. Neither the president nor the Democrats can give in on Obamacare.

That means we are probably going to have a government shutdown -- either this month or next month. It won't work, and it will damage the Republican brand -- but the congressional teabaggers don't care. They aren't interested in what's good for the country or their party -- but only in what keeps the lunatics in their base happy.

Boehner Tries To Sidetrack The "Defunders"

(The above caricature of Speaker Boehner is by DonkeyHotey.)

As you probably know, there is a small war going on among members of the congressional GOP. One faction wants to shutdown the government until the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is either repealed or defunded (which would amount to the same thing. Another faction thinks that won't work, and would just hurt them in the 2014 election (because most Americans don't want to see the government shut down).

This second faction has a stronger grip on reality. President Obama is not about to agree to repeal or defund Obamacare -- his premiere piece of legislation. If the GOP continues on this path, then the government would be shut down, once again hurting the federal credit rating and affecting economies across the world.

Speaker of the House Boehner knows this, and he has come up with an alternate plan. Instead of trying to defund Obamacare when the debt ceiling must be addressed again (which will happen about the middle of October), Boehner wants to use the threat of a government shutdown to force cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

He believes he might actually be able to accomplish this -- since Democrats have given in on substantial budget cuts in the past (remember sequestration?), and even President Obama has proposed a chained CPI (which is fancy language for cuts to Social Security and other mandatory spending programs).

I hope Boehner is wrong, and the Democrats will refuse to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. I hope they will take their case to the people, and make sure everyone knows that the GOP wants to cut these programs -- because huge majorities of Americans don't want these programs cut. They should just make sure the heat falls of the Republicans, even if it means a short shutdown of the government. The congressional GOP will eventually cave.

These are good programs that work just as they were supposed to work. But the benefits they offer are not real generous, and it would hurt millions of Americans to cut those benefits even a little bit. The Republicans will try to convince us that the government can't afford these programs, and if they are not cut they will go broke. That's a lie. The programs have some financial problems because the politicians have been raiding those trust funds to pay for other things (like tax cuts for the rich and unnecessary wars). It's time for those politicians to pay that money back -- even if it means raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

The government doesn't have a spending problem. It has a revenue problem, and that problem needs to be fixed. But cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid should be off the table completely. It's just wrong to punish the elderly and the poor to keep the rich from paying a little more in taxes (which would probably still be less than they paid during the Reagan administration), and to keep letting giant corporations making billions pay no taxes at all.

Boehner Is An Idiot !

(The caricature of Speaker Boehner above is from the incomparable DonkeyHotey.)

Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has demonstrated his incompetence repeatedly in this 113th Congress. He has been unable to get very much done, has shown no desire to compromise with the Senate, and cannot even seem to control the members of his own party in the House. I've seen a lot of Speakers come and go (of both parties), but I don't remember any of them being as weak and ineffectual as Boehner.

And now he shows he is just a total idiot. When questioned about the inability of Congress to get anything done, he tried to defend himself by saying that Congress should not be judged on the number of laws it passes, but on the number of laws it repeals.

That statement is stupid on its face. With this nation's economic difficulties, it should be obvious that Congress needs to pass some laws to get the country moving again -- to create jobs, to increase demand in the marketplace, to raise worker wages, to insure equal wages for women, to stop the outsourcing of American jobs,  and to stop the hiding of money overseas to avoid taxes.

But Boehner is not interested in doing any of that. He has abandoned trying to improve the economy in favor of repealing old laws. Unfortunately, he fails on that also. How many laws has Congress repealed? Frankly, I don't remember any.

He would probably point to the 38 times that his GOP-dominated House has voted to repeal Obamacare, but has that been accomplished? Obamacare has not been repealed, in spite of all those votes -- and it is not going to be repealed (because, while far short of what is needed, Obamacare has proven to be a significant improvement in our health care system).

The truth is that Boehner has been a failure -- whether you look at laws passed or laws repealed.

GOP House Majority Is Breaking Apart

The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has been a joke for a while now. They have refused to compromise with Democrats, and just keep on passing right-wing bills that have absolutely no chance of being accepted by the Senate or the White House -- like repealing Obamacare (which they've done 37 or 38 times now). Any real legislation, legislation that has a chance of actually becoming law, is just a pipe dream in that legislative body.

But it seems that things are getting even worse. The Republican farm bill recently came up for a vote in the House -- and it was soundly defeated on a 195 to 234 vote. This was amazing to me, because the bill punished the poor by cutting food stamps by $20 billion and then rewarded the rich factory farms by putting that money into more crop insurance for them. Normally, this would be a dream bill for the GOP -- to take from the poor and give to the rich. But it got defeated, and its defeat was because too many Republicans voted against it.

Those Republicans voting against it weren't in favor of restoring any food stamp money. In fact, they wanted to cut even more. The bill wasn't mean enough for the House teabaggers. There is currently a growing split among Republicans in the House -- a war between the right-wingers and the far-right-wingers. And they can't seem to even pass symbolic Republican-written bills (that would probably die in the Senate anyway).

Speaker Boehner tried to shift the blame on to the Democrats (most of whom voted against that bad farm bill), but that's silly. The Democrats were never going to help Republicans pass a bill containing $20 billion in food stamp cuts, and it's ridiculous for anyone to think they would. The bill was defeated because Speaker Boehner is too weak to keep his own GOP caucus together long enough to pass a GOP bill. The ultra-right-wingers just don't listen to him anymore.

The Republicans still have a majority in the House -- but it's an impotent majority, unable to even agree among themselves. And it is completely incapable of passing any legislation. They have progressed from joke status to buffoon status. Isn't it time to dump these jerks in 2014, so the Congress can get back to the task of passing legislation to create jobs and get the economy back on track? That certainly won't be done with a House GOP majority.

Boehner Unable To Herd His GOP "Cats"

Speaker Boehner thought he had come up with a plan to put pressure on the president. He called it his "plan B". It would allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for only the richest Americans -- those making more than $1,000,000 a year. In addition, it would be paid for by cuts to discretionary spending. But since he knew his cohorts in the House would not stand for cuts to the bloated military budget, he did away with those cuts and replaced them with even deeper cuts to programs like Food Stamps and Meals on Wheels (which provides nutritious hot meals for the elderly who are unable to cook for themselves).

It was a rather hard-hearted approach to cutting government spending, but then "hard-hearted" has never been a deal-breaker for the Republicans, especially since it protected two things they absolutely love -- military spending and subsidies for corporations. Boehner divided up his Plan B proposal into two separate bills -- one for the cuts to spending and one for the taxes. He was able to barely pass the cuts 215 to 209, with no Democratic votes and 21 Republicans also voting "no".  But he ran into serious problems when he tried to pass the tax portion of the package.

It was already known that the ridiculous Plan B tax proposal would not get any Democratic votes, and you can see why by looking at the chart above. The ridiculous tax proposal would not just raise taxes on those making more than $1 million a year. It would also raise taxes on those making under $200,000 a year, which is most American workers (thanks to the elimination of some deductions). That meant Boehner needed to get at least 217 of his colleagues to vote for his plan, or it would fail.

And after spending most of the day trying to convince Republicans to vote for the measure, Boehner finally cancelled the vote on the second part of his Plan B. It seems he could not get enough Republicans to vote for it, and it was going to go down in flames. He decided it would be better to just withdraw it rather than be embarrassed by a defeat. Too many Republicans just could not bring themselves to vote for taxing millionaires a little bit more.

This very likely means there will be no deal on the "fiscal cliff" before the year ends. Since his power-play failed spectacularly, Boehner is left with nothing to do except surrender to Obama's demands -- and he cannot do that until after the end of the year when all the Bush tax cuts expire (and he is forced to go along with Obama or risk the ire of nearly all Americans). The House has now recessed. It could come back after christmas, but probably won't since it is doubtful that Boehner could herd his GOP cats any better then than he could yesterday.

As for the mean-spirited cuts that did pass yesterday, they are as good as dead. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called that bill a non-starter. It has about as much of a chance of passing the Senate as a snowball does of surviving a whole summer in the Mojave Desert.

This is a huge failure for Speaker Boehner. It not only weakens his negotiating position with the president, but it could even call into question whether he can sustain his tenure as Speaker of the House. It will be interesting to see what happens when the new Congress meets in January.

Boehner Has Another "Ridiculous" Proposal

The president and members of Congress are still unable to reach an agreement on the so-called "fiscal cliff". Personally, I don't think that's such a disaster. The only thing that seriously needs to be done is to keep the Bush tax cuts for those making less than $250,000 a year (and eliminate the cuts for those making more than that). But that is going to happen -- if not by the end of this year, then it will happen when the new Congress meets in January.

The Republicans are still talking big, but they have to know their backs are against the wall on this issue. The Democrats will propose a stand-alone bill in January which cuts taxes for 98% of Americans and raises taxes for the top 2% -- and it would be political suicide for the Republicans to vote against that bill. As for the rest, allowing the sequestration cuts to discretionary spending to happen (including small cuts to the military budget), I seriously doubt that would be the disaster that the Republicans (and some Democrats) are making it out to be.

One of the reasons the Republicans are trying to paint this as a disaster waiting to happen, other than their desire to keep the tax cuts for the rich, is because they want to get their fingers on the so-called "entitlements" (Social Security and Medicare). They have never liked either program, and they will happily chip away at both until they can get rid of them. They say it is to help the budget deficit, but Social Security has never contributed a single penny to that deficit and Medicare represents only a tiny part of all discretionary spending (far less than the bloated military spending).

Now Speaker Boehner has come up with a new proposal he wants the president to accept. He says he would agree to allow a rise in taxes for those making over a million dollars a year (instead of $250,000 a year), if the president (and Democrats) would agree to cuts in Social Security and Medicare. The cuts he is talking about now involves replacing the yearly adjustments in those programs to meet the rate of inflation with something called a "chained CPI". This would cut the increases to less than the inflation rate. While it would not be an instant disaster for those on Social Security and Medicare, it would mean their buying power would fall a little further behind each year until they could no longer live on the income they get after several years.

This proposal should definitely be a non-starter for President Obama and the Democrats. Not only would it make unacceptable cuts to programs the elderly depend on to exist, but it would raise far less money by raising taxes only for those making over a million dollars a year instead of $250,000 a year. It's a sham proposal, made only to give people the illusion that the Republicans are trying to negotiate in good faith (which they aren't).

Can Boehner Really Be This Dumb ?

Last December the House Republicans, led by Speaker John Boehner, had their asses handed to them by President Obama and Senate Democrats. The president wanted an extension of the payroll tax cuts he had initiated -- tax cuts that affected millions of American workers. Since these payroll tax cuts did nothing for the rich (the only people the GOP cares about), the Republicans opposed them. Realizing they ran the risk of alienating millions of voters, the Republicans in the House finally relented and passed a payroll tax cut, but loaded that bill with giveaways for corporations and the rich and cuts for ordinary Americans.

The president and the Democrats refused to give in and wouldn't even let the crazy House bill come up for a vote in the Senate. As time ran out in December and the Republicans began to take the hit for not approving the payroll tax cuts, they finally gave in and approved a two-month extension of it. The one concession they got was an agreement that a quick decision on the Keystone oil pipeline would be made by the president. They thought they had forced the president to help them give a big new payday to Big Oil.

They were wrong. The president made the quick decision they wanted, but it was to reject the pipeline. The Republicans had been played. Democrats got their payroll tax extension and the Republicans got nothing -- except for a lot of bad publicity for delaying the payroll tax cut extension. But Boehner and his Republican cohorts seem to have learned nothing from that political blunder.

Since the payroll tax cut was only extended for two months, an extension for the rest of the year must be approved before the end of February. And the Republicans are once again demanding corporate giveaways in exchange for agreeing to the tax cut for working Americans. Boehner told Fox News last Sunday that they are still trying to get the pipeline approved (which would create virtually no jobs and pose a serious danger to the environment). And he threatened to make approval of the pipeline a requirement for extending the payroll tax cut.

The president has made it clear that he will not approve the pipeline before 2013 -- giving the EPA and others time to fully study the environmental impact of the pipeline (since the only study and hearings conducted so far was by the company wanting to build the pipeline). It is extremely unlikely the president will give in on this, especially after his recent decision to reject the pipeline.

That means the Republicans are once again going to put themselves in the position of opposing the payroll tax cuts unless a big giveaway to corporations is approved with it. Have they already forgotten the anti-Republican sentiment among voters this same position earned them just last December? It's hard to believe that Boehner and his Republican House cohorts could be this dumb again this soon.

The president has shown recently that he is now willing to play a little political hardball, and he has the voters on his side in this debate. It is the Republicans who will again be viewed as trying to block the payroll tax cut, and that is not going to sit well with millions of working people -- especially with an election coming up in just a few months.

The Republicans are already viewed by many (justifiably) as favoring the rich (and corporations) over all other Americans. If they try to play games with the payroll tax cut extension again, this view will just be verified. I know the Republicans love the campaign money they have received from Big Oil, but can that money replace all the votes they stand to lose over this issue?

House GOP Makes Critical Mistake

The House GOP has been playing political blackmail with President Obama and the Democrats since they returned to the majority in 2010. They simply oppose whatever the Democrats try to do, until the Democrats give in and give the Republicans whatever it is they want. They have used this tactic to seriously slash social programs, cut EPA funding, force an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and kill numerous Democratic attempts to create jobs. Evidently they thought they could do this one more time -- and give their buddies in Big Oil a nice payday by forcing the president to approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

A few days ago, the Senate approved a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut the president had asked for. The extension would give them time to return after the holidays and negotiate extending the extension for the entire year. The bill also put off for those two months a cut to Medicare payments to doctors and allowed unemployment benefits to continue. Most people thought this was a reasonable bill, since all three things would change at the end of this month if the bill was not approved -- and this would let Congress go home for the holidays.

But that was not good enough for the House GOP members. Since the payroll tax cuts (and unemployment benefits and full Medicare payments) would end on December 31st, they thought they had the perfect opportunity to blackmail the Democrats once again. They wanted to force the Democrats to go ahead and do the extensions for a full year -- and include the pipeline approval in the bill. They were so sure of themselves that in a caucus meeting Monday night, where they decided to kill the two-month extension, they even called themselves heroes and compared themselves to William Wallace (the Scottish hero of the movie Braveheart).