Get Nervous: The Fate of the Country Is in John Boehner’s Hands
October 14, 2013
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Minding the caveat that fluid events are fluid and thus subject to flowing to unexpected places, it looks like Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are a hair’s breadth from a deal to reopen the government and extend the debt limit for several months.
If they ink it today, they can probably pass it before Thursday, at which point the Treasury Department will run out of headroom under the debt limit and the country will be at the mercy of its lenders.
That raises a troubling question: What the hell happens in the House?
You may have noticed things over there aren’t exactly spinning like a top. And yet the fate of the country will soon be in the hands of its leaders. Is there any reason to believe the House won’t biff it?
Unfortunately, the only evidence we have to go on is that John Boehner has never explicitly invoked the Hastert Rule over the debt limit and government funding bills (like he has over, say, immigration reform), and he’s publicly foreclosed on allowing the country to default. Everything else is extrapolation.
It stands to reason that GOP dead-enders will oppose any bipartisan deal — they’re serious about this extortion business — and might even threaten to defrock Boehner if he defies them. But as weak as his control of the House is, Boehner’s still officially the speaker — and as long as he’s officially the speaker, he controls the floor.
The logical leap (really, the assumption) everyone’s making is that Boehner will put the Senate plan on the floor before midnight, rather than kowtow to the dead-enders to preserve his speakership. There are almost certainly 217-plus votes in the House for any deal that comes out of the Senate, which means we’ll only crash through the debt limit deadline if Boehner chooses to let the country default the same way he chose to shut down the government.
That would be a truly ignominious act. The operating assumption at the White House — and I think basically everywhere — is that Boehner’s self-dealing enough to shut down the government for personal reasons, but not to blow past the debt limit. He might futz around ahead of the deadline, try to send the bill back to the Senate with riders that the Senate will strip and go a few rounds of ping-pong like he did on September 30.
But when time’s up, he’ll put the Senate plan on the floor and get out of the way. It looks like that assumption is about to be tested.
Copyright: AlterNet
Source: http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/get-nervous-the-fate-of-the-country-is-in-john-boehners-hands/79005/
when will people learn that this is all pre planned they already know what is going to happen when were and they also know how people is going to react.
I agree. It’s all WWF wrestling just minus the chair over the head. BTW- We can still pay our debt obligations with the tax revenue alone, we just have to shut down some major departments and lay off a ton of Federal workers. If we pass a CR and raise the debt ceiling, we will essentially be sponsoring hyperinflation and that is how it ends for the US. If we shut it all down and bring government down to size we will have deflation. Or you could have Obama invoke executive orders to call it a crisis and just do away with congress and the SC input… I bet he would like that best.
Either way it ends poorly.
You are very wrong, the fate of our country is still with the World Bank who controls Obama.
Boehner and Obama have made a side deal. What ever happens will happen because the Powers to be want it to happen.
I’ll bet you that Obama in co-operation with Boehner want to keep the government closed because the economy is crashing and they are getting a jump on reasons to implement closing
EBT, starting Riot’s and have Marshal law.