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JOBS, JOBS, JOBS! Boehner poised to raise student loan interest rates — Boehner told the House Republican Conference Thursday morning that it was unlikely Congress would be able to prevent student loan interest rates from doubling before the end of the month, but he blamed the Senate, since the lower chamber has already passed a bill. He dubbed the fight “phony,” and urged his members not to fall victim to what he considers a manufactured tussle. First, the issue isn’t “phony” at all to those affected by it. […] Second, blaming the Senate is silly. The House passed its version, but paid for it by cutting access to breast cancer and cervical cancer screenings. Senate Democrats offered an alternative, paying for the lower rates by closing a tax loophole that currently allows some very wealthy people to shield some of their earnings from the payroll tax (the S-corp provision). Republicans killed the proposal with yet another filibuster. As far as Boehner is apparently concerned, it’s either the House version or nothing, which means student loans interest rates will likely double just 30 days from now. — Maddow Blog Boehner: “Let’s call bulls— bulls—. This election is about jobs, jobs, jobs.” —POLITICO Boehner and his caucus will demonstrate their laser-like focus on jobs with a vote on another anti-abortion bill. – TPM House fails to pass not-’jobs, jobs, jobs’ abortion bill, on purpose — The House voted on their anti-abortion bill [yesterday], the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, or PRENDA, the one that would prohibit the abortion practice that doesn’t happen in America, gender and race selection, or as David Waldman calls it, PRETENDA. It failed 248-165. It failed because Republican leadership wanted it to fail. They brought it up under suspension of the rules, which meant it had to have a two-thirds majority to pass. Why would they do that? David explains: Republicans may think they get the best mileage out of this bill by selling it as compelling and necessary, and then setting it up to fall short, for which they can then blame Democrats. — Daily Kos
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JOBS, JOBS, JOBS! Boehner poised to raise student loan interest rates — Boehner told the House Republican Conference Thursday morning that it was unlikely Congress would be able to prevent student loan interest rates from doubling before the end of the month, but he blamed the Senate, since the lower chamber has already passed a bill. He dubbed the fight “phony,” and urged his members not to fall victim to what he considers a manufactured tussle. First, the issue isn’t “phony” at all to those affected by it. […] Second, blaming the Senate is silly. The House passed its version, but paid for it by cutting access to breast cancer and cervical cancer screenings. Senate Democrats offered an alternative, paying for the lower rates by closing a tax loophole that currently allows some very wealthy people to shield some of their earnings from the payroll tax (the S-corp provision). Republicans killed the proposal with yet another filibuster. As far as Boehner is apparently concerned, it’s either the House version or nothing, which means student loans interest rates will likely double just 30 days from now. — Maddow Blog

  • Boehner: “Let’s call bulls— bulls—. This election is about jobs, jobs, jobs.” —POLITICO
  • Boehner and his caucus will demonstrate their laser-like focus on jobs with a vote on another anti-abortion bill. – TPM
  • House fails to pass not-’jobs, jobs, jobs’ abortion bill, on purpose — The House voted on their anti-abortion bill [yesterday], the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, or PRENDA, the one that would prohibit the abortion practice that doesn’t happen in America, gender and race selection, or as David Waldman calls it, PRETENDA. It failed 248-165. It failed because Republican leadership wanted it to fail. They brought it up under suspension of the rules, which meant it had to have a two-thirds majority to pass. Why would they do that? David explains: Republicans may think they get the best mileage out of this bill by selling it as compelling and necessary, and then setting it up to fall short, for which they can then blame Democrats. — Daily Kos

Pelosi described Boehner’s approach to coming debt-ceiling negotiations as immature and irresponsible. “Last year, just the threat of not lifting the debt ceiling caused our credit rating to be lowered. This is not a responsible, mature, sensible place for us to go. We all know we have to reduce the deficit. We have to do it in a balanced way,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The speaker wants to go over the edge. […] “If the speaker was serious about moving forward, Pelosi said, he should bring the middle-class tax cuts to the floor now so that they are not held hostage during negotiations after the election. “I challenge the speaker right now to bring the middle income tax cuts to the floor,” she said. Pelosi praised the defense cuts that are scheduled to take effect in 2013 as a result of the previous debt ceiling deal. — HuffPo

John Boehner and fellow Republicans want to play another game of “government shutdown” over the debt limit – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wants Congress to raise the debt limit again later this year “without drama, pain and damage.” House Speaker John Boehner has other ideas. […] “When the time comes, I will again insist on my simple principle of cuts and reforms greater than the debt limit increase. This is the only avenue I see right now to force the elected leadership of this country to solve our structural fiscal imbalance. If that means we have to do a series of stop-gap measures, so be it – but that’s not the ideal. Let’s start solving the problem. We can make the bold cuts and reforms necessary to meet this principle, and we must.” — Brian Beutler | TPM There will be no compromise: any tax increases to the wealthy or cuts to the DoD are completely off the table. Why are Republicans flirting with Debt Limit Debacle 2.0? — Protecting The Bush Tax Cuts: This is a generational imperative for the GOP. The 2001 and 2003 Bush cuts are key to the decades-long conservative goal of redistributing wealth further up the income ladder and rolling back the federal government’s role in providing social services. All of the cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, and if President Obama wins in November, he’ll have a lot of leverage to demand that the Republicans own up to the results and allow the cuts for high-income earners to expire. – Brian Beutler | TPM Under the current baseline agreed to in the Budget Control Act, the debt-ceiling deal wherein Boehner claims he received “98 percent of what he wanted,” every bracket of the Bush Tax Cuts will expire at the end of fiscal 2012. The only way any bracket, whether at the low-end or high-end, will be extended beyond fiscal 2012 is through an act of congress. If congress and the president simply do nothing, they will automatically expire. — Bob Cesca Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY – ”It is pretty galling for Speaker Boehner to be laying down demands for another debt-ceiling agreement when he won’t even abide by the last one. The last thing the country needs is a rerun of last summer’s debacle that nearly brought down our economy.” Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-MD  – ”The dollar for dollar limit, of course, led to the sequester, which none of us like. While it sounds good, the execution of that principle does not seem to be very disciplined. The Speaker, in my view, believes [in a broad, balanced approach] as well, [but] the Speaker’s party does not believe in balance. Mr. Boehner is responding to the same people who didn’t want the Export-Import Bank to pass. The Republicans are good at buying and lousy at paying. They borrowed a lot of money, as a result we owe a lot of money. They don’t believe that tax cuts need to be paid for so they give away revenues, they continue to spend money and inevitably deficits occur.” The last GOP-led hostage crisis over the debt — It was, to my mind, the worst thing an American major party has done, at least in domestic politics, since the Civil War. It was a move without parallel. The entirety of a party threatened to deliberately hurt the country unless their rivals paid a hefty ransom — in this case, debt reduction. It didn’t matter that Republicans were largely responsible for the debt in the first place, and it didn’t matter that Republicans routinely raised the debt ceiling dozens of times over the last several decades. This wasn’t just another partisan dispute; it was a scandal for the ages. This one radical scheme helped lead to the first-ever downgrade of U.S. debt; it riled financial markets and generated widespread uncertainty about the stability of the American system; and it severely undermined American credibility on the global stage. Indeed, in many parts of the world, observers didn’t just lose respect for us, they were actually laughing at us. It’s the kind of thing that should have scarred the Republican Party for a generation. Not only did that never happen, the Republican hostage takers are already vowing to create this identical crisis all over again, on purpose.– Steve Benen
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John Boehner and fellow Republicans want to play another game of “government shutdown” over the debt limit – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wants Congress to raise the debt limit again later this year “without drama, pain and damage.” House Speaker John Boehner has other ideas. […] “When the time comes, I will again insist on my simple principle of cuts and reforms greater than the debt limit increase. This is the only avenue I see right now to force the elected leadership of this country to solve our structural fiscal imbalance. If that means we have to do a series of stop-gap measures, so be it – but that’s not the ideal. Let’s start solving the problem. We can make the bold cuts and reforms necessary to meet this principle, and we must.” — Brian Beutler | TPM

  • There will be no compromise: any tax increases to the wealthy or cuts to the DoD are completely off the table.
  • Why are Republicans flirting with Debt Limit Debacle 2.0? — Protecting The Bush Tax Cuts: This is a generational imperative for the GOP. The 2001 and 2003 Bush cuts are key to the decades-long conservative goal of redistributing wealth further up the income ladder and rolling back the federal government’s role in providing social services. All of the cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, and if President Obama wins in November, he’ll have a lot of leverage to demand that the Republicans own up to the results and allow the cuts for high-income earners to expire. – Brian Beutler | TPM
  • Under the current baseline agreed to in the Budget Control Act, the debt-ceiling deal wherein Boehner claims he received “98 percent of what he wanted,” every bracket of the Bush Tax Cuts will expire at the end of fiscal 2012. The only way any bracket, whether at the low-end or high-end, will be extended beyond fiscal 2012 is through an act of congress. If congress and the president simply do nothing, they will automatically expire. — Bob Cesca
  • Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY – ”It is pretty galling for Speaker Boehner to be laying down demands for another debt-ceiling agreement when he won’t even abide by the last one. The last thing the country needs is a rerun of last summer’s debacle that nearly brought down our economy.”
  • Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-MD  – ”The dollar for dollar limit, of course, led to the sequester, which none of us like. While it sounds good, the execution of that principle does not seem to be very disciplined. The Speaker, in my view, believes [in a broad, balanced approach] as well, [but] the Speaker’s party does not believe in balance. Mr. Boehner is responding to the same people who didn’t want the Export-Import Bank to pass. The Republicans are good at buying and lousy at paying. They borrowed a lot of money, as a result we owe a lot of money. They don’t believe that tax cuts need to be paid for so they give away revenues, they continue to spend money and inevitably deficits occur.”
  • The last GOP-led hostage crisis over the debt — It was, to my mind, the worst thing an American major party has done, at least in domestic politics, since the Civil War. It was a move without parallel. The entirety of a party threatened to deliberately hurt the country unless their rivals paid a hefty ransom — in this case, debt reduction. It didn’t matter that Republicans were largely responsible for the debt in the first place, and it didn’t matter that Republicans routinely raised the debt ceiling dozens of times over the last several decades. This wasn’t just another partisan dispute; it was a scandal for the ages. This one radical scheme helped lead to the first-ever downgrade of U.S. debt; it riled financial markets and generated widespread uncertainty about the stability of the American system; and it severely undermined American credibility on the global stage. Indeed, in many parts of the world, observers didn’t just lose respect for us, they were actually laughing at us. It’s the kind of thing that should have scarred the Republican Party for a generation. Not only did that never happen, the Republican hostage takers are already vowing to create this identical crisis all over again, on purpose.– Steve Benen
… REPUBLICANS PICK AND CHOOSE THEIR “CHRISTIAN” CONVICTIONS: Boehner to Catholic bishops: Take ‘bigger look’ at Republican budget –Referencing Matthew 25, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called on Congress to put the poor first in budget priorities and rethink cuts to programs that benefited the least among us. But Boehner, a Catholic, said at a press conference Wednesday the cuts were necessary, despite the impact they may have on the poor.  […] The House Agriculture Committee approved a measure on Wednesday that would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food stamps, by $133 billion over the next decade. Approximately 2 million individuals would be cut off from the program entirely, according to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. Another 44 million would see their benefits cut. In a letter to House Committee on Agriculture members, Bishop Stephen Blaire described the proposed cuts to the program as “unjustified and wrong.” “If savings need to be achieved, cuts to agricultural subsidies and direct payments should be considered before cutting anti-hunger programs that help feed poor and vulnerable people,” he continued.
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REPUBLICANS PICK AND CHOOSE THEIR “CHRISTIAN” CONVICTIONS: Boehner to Catholic bishops: Take ‘bigger look’ at Republican budget –Referencing Matthew 25, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called on Congress to put the poor first in budget priorities and rethink cuts to programs that benefited the least among us. But Boehner, a Catholic, said at a press conference Wednesday the cuts were necessary, despite the impact they may have on the poor.  […] The House Agriculture Committee approved a measure on Wednesday that would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food stamps, by $133 billion over the next decade. Approximately 2 million individuals would be cut off from the program entirely, according to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. Another 44 million would see their benefits cut. In a letter to House Committee on Agriculture members, Bishop Stephen Blaire described the proposed cuts to the program as “unjustified and wrong.” “If savings need to be achieved, cuts to agricultural subsidies and direct payments should be considered before cutting anti-hunger programs that help feed poor and vulnerable people,” he continued.

… JOHN BOEHNER YESTERDAY: “This election is going to be a referendum on the president’s economic policies. They’ve not only not helped the economy, they’ve actually made it worse. When you look at his higher taxes, his refusal to deal with the debt, the regulatory regime here in Washington out of control, they’ve scared every businessperson and investor in America.” Speaker Boehner has an odd definition of “worse.” While Boehner talks about Obama’s “higher taxes,” Obama has actually cut taxes. While Boehner said Obama has refused to deal with the debt, Obama offered Boehner a $4 trillion debt-reduction plan that Republicans rejected. While Boehner frets over a “regulatory regime,” Obama has actually created fewer regulations than his Republican predecessor. And then there’s the notion that Obama made the economy “worse.”… [Time for Boehner to update his talking points]
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JOHN BOEHNER YESTERDAY: “This election is going to be a referendum on the president’s economic policies. They’ve not only not helped the economy, they’ve actually made it worse. When you look at his higher taxes, his refusal to deal with the debt, the regulatory regime here in Washington out of control, they’ve scared every businessperson and investor in America.” Speaker Boehner has an odd definition of “worse.” While Boehner talks about Obama’s “higher taxes,” Obama has actually cut taxes. While Boehner said Obama has refused to deal with the debt, Obama offered Boehner a $4 trillion debt-reduction plan that Republicans rejected. While Boehner frets over a “regulatory regime,” Obama has actually created fewer regulations than his Republican predecessor. And then there’s the notion that Obama made the economy “worse.”… [Time for Boehner to update his talking points]

… Because nothing happens timely in the GOP-led House anymore:  Senate passes highway bill, but rough road ahead - House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio has said he will take up the Senate bill “or something like it” this month, unless Republicans can come to terms on their own version. Rifts in GOP ranks have scuttled two other bills – one a five-year plan and the other an 18-month offering. […]Should the bill pass as something similar to the current Senate version, it will have a number of improvements that will boost business, say many policy observers. The bill consolidates federal transportation programs from roughly 100 down to a third as many. It speeds up the delivery of projects by cutting back on regulations. It offers more flexibility to states to partner with the private sector on infrastructure projects like privately funded roads.
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Because nothing happens timely in the GOP-led House anymore: 

Senate passes highway bill, but rough road ahead - House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio has said he will take up the Senate bill “or something like it” this month, unless Republicans can come to terms on their own version. Rifts in GOP ranks have scuttled two other bills – one a five-year plan and the other an 18-month offering. […]Should the bill pass as something similar to the current Senate version, it will have a number of improvements that will boost business, say many policy observers. The bill consolidates federal transportation programs from roughly 100 down to a third as many. It speeds up the delivery of projects by cutting back on regulations. It offers more flexibility to states to partner with the private sector on infrastructure projects like privately funded roads.

It Is a War on Women, and It Is Not Stopping - Anyway, the ladies from Becket want us all to know that this isn’t about contraception. It’s about religious liberty, which is now threatened because secular insurance companies have to provide birth control free as part of a general health-care package even to those people who work in Catholic institutions.[…] The point of this is to show that, as heartening as the polls on these issues might be to Democrats, and especially to the Democrat in the White House, the people who seek to truncate brutally the right of women to control their bodies and, specifically, their health care, are organized, well-financed, and they simply do not stop. There is nothing on the other side of the argument that compares to the network of organizations that apparently have decided that this is their last best chance to roll those particular rights back, and that are prepared to fight that battle on every front possible. This is not encouraging. [images: sandandglass]

  • They just don’t know when to quit: House Speaker John A. Boehner signaled on Thursday that House Republicans would continue the fight. “I think it’s important for us to win this issue,” Mr. Boehner told reporters just before the Senate killed a Republican measure with a vote of 51 to 48. “The government, our government, for 220 years has respected the religious views of the American people, and for all of this time there’s been an exception for those churches and other groups to protect the religious beliefs that they believe in, and that’s being violated here.”
  • Georgia Lawmaker Compares Women to Cows and Pigs - ”Life gives us many experiences,” he explained. “I’ve had the experience of delivering calves, dead and alive — delivering pigs, dead and alive. … It breaks our hearts to see those animals not make it.” […] House Bill 954 easily passed last week by a vote of 102-65.  Opponents have said that the so-called “fetal pain” bill would force women to carry stillborn fetuses or to have a Cesarean delivery. Doctors could also face 10 years in prison if they are involved in illegal abortions.
  • SMALL WONDER THEN that the GOP is losing women  - When the Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey asked last summer which party should control Congress, a slim 46-42 percent plurality of women said it should be the Democrats. But in a survey released Monday, compiling polling since the beginning of the year, that figure had widened considerably to a 15-point advantage for the Democrats, according to polling by the team of Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican Bill McInturff. Fifty-one percent favored Democratic control; only 36 percent wanted to see the Republicans in charge.
The reason [Boehner] lost the urban/suburban Republicans is because Teabaggers stripped out mass transit funding, since Madison, Hamilton and Washington didn’t ride light rail. Boehner knows he’s in trouble: “The American people entrusted us with the majority in the House. What we do with it us up to us,” he said. “We can use it to take steps together, one at a time, toward the vision we share. Or we can do nothing. We can squander the time we’ve been given … allowing our internal disagreements to paralyze us.” Only the soft bigotry of low expectations would let someone think that passing a highway bill, the most bog standard piece of everyday legislation, is an indicator that the House isn’t paralyzed. Boehner knows he’s doomed to repeat 1948 and his suicide caucus won’t let him do anything about it.
Never Do Anything / Your GOP-led Congress not at work 

(Source: underthemountainbunker.com)

… Republicans see ‘jobs bills’ as election winner - Tucked in his left breast-coat pocket where he can pull it out to wave before TV cameras is ammunition that House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner believes his Republicans can use to achieve victory in the November 6 elections. It is a four-by-eight-inch card detailing more than two dozen “jobs bills” passed by the Republican-led House last year. They are now bottled up by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, one of President Barack Obama’s top allies on Capitol Hill. […] The Republican bills focus largely not on creating new positions but on protecting existing jobs by eliminating federal regulations on businesses — from Internet firms and oil drillers to cement factories and industrial boilers. “I have yet to see a single one that was actually a jobs bill,” said Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.“Every one of these [Republican “jobs” bills], as far as I can tell, is basically from decades-old conservatives playbook of cut taxes for business, cut regulations for business,” Ornstein said.
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Republicans see ‘jobs bills’ as election winner - Tucked in his left breast-coat pocket where he can pull it out to wave before TV cameras is ammunition that House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner believes his Republicans can use to achieve victory in the November 6 elections. It is a four-by-eight-inch card detailing more than two dozen “jobs bills” passed by the Republican-led House last year. They are now bottled up by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, one of President Barack Obama’s top allies on Capitol Hill. […] The Republican bills focus largely not on creating new positions but on protecting existing jobs by eliminating federal regulations on businesses — from Internet firms and oil drillers to cement factories and industrial boilers. “I have yet to see a single one that was actually a jobs bill,” said Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.“Every one of these [Republican “jobs” bills], as far as I can tell, is basically from decades-old conservatives playbook of cut taxes for business, cut regulations for business,” Ornstein said.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, defended Wednesday the decision to move forward with a roughly $100 billion payroll tax cut extension that is not paid for, arguing that it was the only way to prevent a tax hike. “We were not going to allow Democrats to continue to play games and cause a tax increase for hardworking Americans,” Boehner told reporters on Capitol Hill. “We made a decision to bring them to the table so that the games would stop and we would get this worked out.

Boehner defends payroll tax deal

And if you believe that, I have a beautiful bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.

(Source: underthemountainbunker.com)

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