Who cares? Anyway, Obama's phone call to Boehner this morning saved the country money-it wasn't long distance. Lol.
excactly who wont dick around funding important parts of the govt when he can hold out for obamacare funding and have the media blame the republicans for the shut down.
or they can pass a budget in parts like they did for many decades. this clean cr is a b.s. condition imposed by the dems.
"Clean" means without defunding Obamacare attached, Obama has stated other riders would be considered. This piecemeal approach is stupid, even for tea partiers. What's the end game, every budget item is passed without attachment, "clean", except for the last one where defunding Obamacare will be attached? Defunding Obamacare will then rest on refunding a single government department or program? Dead end strategy, nothing more than a delaying tactic. John Boehner Too Embarrassed to Defend His Own Extortion Demands By Jonathan Chait "Like President Obama, John Boehner used his remarks today to reiterate his same position on the debt ceiling and the government shutdown. Boehnerâs central rhetorical thrust, as it has been all along, has been to elide the crucial distinction between hostage-taking and normal political negotiation. The latter involves mutual concessions in order to arrive at policy changes both parties agree would improve the status quo. The former involves one party forcing the other to accept otherwise unacceptable policy changes by threatening to undertake actions that both sides agree are harmful. "Boehner began by repeating his debunked and obvious falsehood that the debt ceiling is always used in the manner he proposes to use it now. Boehnerâs line here is that â27 timesâ in the past it has forced the parties to deal with the deficit. In his earlier press conference, Obama explained why this is false: Those instances actually entailed the two parties negotiating in the traditional fashion and appending a debt-ceiling increase onto the final result. They did not involve a party actually threatening default to wrest un-reciprocated concessions. "Rather than engage with Obamaâs debunking, Boehner simply repeated his original, false formulation. Boehner augmented his talking point by mentioning that Democrats in Congress declined to lift the debt ceiling in 2010. But this doesnât strengthen Boehnerâs case â it weakens it even more. The Democratic Congress was not threatening default, nor was it attempting to force Obama to accept policies he opposed. It was simply holding off on a vote in a (wildly misguided) belief that Republicans should have to take ownership of the debt issue rather than blame it on them. "Even more audaciously, Boehner dismissed the notion of lifting the debt ceiling and then negotiating the budget as âunconditional surrender.â How it could be unconditional surrender when he publicly favors lifting the debt ceiling, Boehner did not say. " More>>