Yesterday, House Considered passing a ransome bill then leaving town

[applegrove]

Today’s Update: John Boehner to Decide Whether to Blow Up World Now

By Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/10/boehner-to-decide-whether-to-blow-up-world-now.html

"SNIP..............................



The principle undergirding the emerging Senate bill — ending hostage tactics, and making all deals reciprocal — is unacceptable to House Republicans, who want to preserve debt-ceiling hostage-taking as a form of policy leverage. So, rather than wait for the Senate to act on its own, the House is attempting to move its own bill, which demands a small ransom: suspending the medical device tax, and eliminating employer health-care subsidies for congressional staff. The ransom is minor, but preserves the principle that the House can use the threat of default to force the president to accede to otherwise unacceptable policy demands, without making any policy concessions of its own.


But the House is a chaotic, bizarre chamber, and any number of things could happen. Jake Sherman reported a week ago that Boehner has told fellow Republicans he has “something up his sleeve.” The most chilling possibility, floated this morning by a source to National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, is that the House could pass its small-ransom bill and then leave town. No other sources have confirmed this speculation yet, but it would be an incredibly dangerous form of brinksmanship. Leaving town after passing the bill would make the small ransom the House’s final offer before default. It would force the Obama administration either to sign the bill, and make debt-ceiling extortion a permanent part of the new constitutional architecture, or else allow default. The game here would be to force Obama to be complicit in an excruciating dilemma constructed by the House Republicans:




............................SNIP"

[kentuck]

1. The President would have been authorized to call them back to Washington...

if that had happened.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

2. That was from yesterday. Sorry. n/t

[applegrove]

3. It shows what was in their hearts. I still think it is important.

[bunnies]

4. Wasnt that yesterday?

[applegrove]

5. Yes. I'll put yesterday in the OP. It is news today because it shows

what was in those ****ers minds.

[bunnies]

6. Phew. You scared me.

I agree. Just the thought of it shows how psychotic they are.

[Turbineguy]

7. Today they are holding a vote late

so as to inconvenience as many people as possible. It's what teabaggers would call "mature".

Haha Mr. President, we're keeping you up late tonight neener-neener.

Of course this thing might very well still crash. After all, some of the worst people in the country are involved.

[applegrove]

8. They're just not happy unless they have diminshed their opposition somehow.