Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Happy to be wrong!

I'm quite happy to have been proven wrong -- that the House approved of a Senate compromise deal to reopen government and to stave off the debt ceiling.

But let's deconstruct what happened.
  • House Republicans were going to take up the Senate bill for a vote before the Senate, but changed its mind.
  • Senator Cruz announced that he would not block a vote on the Senate compromise.
  • Tea Party Republicans in the Senate voted against compromise (Lee, Cruz, Rubio, Paul).
  • In total, 40% of Senate Republicans voted against the compromise.
  • Outside conservative groups split their message with some calling Republicans to vote against the Senate compromise while others hailing it as a victory for House Republicans -- more on that in a future post.
  • John Boehner broke his Hastert Rule again, as the final tally would indicate with 62% of House Republicans voting against the compromise.
  • But wait, all they did was punt the debt ceiling and government funding until late Winter (Jan / Feb 2014). 
  • And to top it off, it maintained sequester-level cuts, while altering the ACA with a Republican-led demand to tighten up income verification.
In other words, yet again Democrats caved to give Republicans some of what they wanted, and none of what Democrats wanted, unless you count reopening government and raising the debt ceiling as things that only Democrats want.  And if that's the case -- that Republicans really are nihilists -- then maybe they should disband as a political party.

Think about that for a bit before you go to bed.



An aside for Oregonians:
Guess who voted for default and to keep government shut down.

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