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Owner59 -> Has Boehner gone boenkers? (12/20/2011 4:25:33 AM)
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"Has as John Boehner lost control?"
"First, John Boehner wanted the Senate to pass a payroll tax cut bill. Then, he wanted to make a show of killing it. Now, he won’t hold a House vote on it at all.
In the last and biggest political test of a wild year — Boehner’s final exam for 2012 — the House speaker has shown yet again that he doesn’t have the juice to whip his troops into line. If anything, it is rank-and-file House Republicans who are continually snapping their leader back to the pack when he gets too far out in front of them.
His plans change with their whims, the latest of which is to escalate a battle with a nearly unified Senate and President Barack Obama over a two-month extension of the Social Security payroll tax cut, welfare and unemployment programs, and current Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors.
GOP leaders on Monday abandoned a day-old proposal to vote down the Senate bill, which would have required Republicans to defy their brand by going on record against a tax cut. Now, they’re portraying a procedural vote to create a House-Senate conference as an implicit rejection of the Senate’s bill. Republicans believe they can win a showdown with the Senate and either get the full-year extension of the payroll tax cut they seek or win the public relations war if 160 million working Americans see their taxes rise in January.
It’s a high-risk strategy with little reward available: In the worst-case scenario, House Republicans would take sole blame for raising taxes, cutting welfare and unemployment benefits just after Christmas and slashing reimbursement rates for doctors who treat Medicare patients. House Democrats now sense a potential game-changer for their prospects of winning control of the chamber in 2012, which have been dim."
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70678.html#ixzz1h4q8X314
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