Saturday, July 30, 2011

Friday's Summary

Briefly, here's where things stand...

Boehner got his compromise deal, but just barely:

Speaker John Boehner pushed his debt-ceiling bill through the House Friday night with the support of 218 Republicans. Here are the 22 no votes:

Justin Amash (Mich.)
Michele Bachmann (Minn.)
Chip Cravaack (Minn.)

Jason Chaffetz (Utah)
Scott Desjarlais (Tenn.)
Tom Graves (Ga.)
Tim Huelskamp (Kans.)
Steve King (Iowa)
Tim Johnson (Ill.)
Tom McClintock (Calif.)
Mick Mulvaney (S.C.)
Ron Paul (Texas)
Connie Mack (Fla.)
Jim Jordan (Ohio)
Tim Scott (S.C.)
Paul Broun (Ga.)
Tom Latham (Iowa)
Jeff Duncan (S.C.)
Trey Gowdy (S.C.)
Steve Southerland (Fla.)
Joe Walsh (Ill.)
Joe Wilson (S.C.)

CORRECTED: Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) voted YES on the Boehner bill. That was incorrect in the initial list. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) has been added to the list.


Note to self: these people are the serious conservatives. I'm very disappointed in a lot of other Reps who I know are solid but went along with Boehner's stupid plan anyway. I'm going to be very interested in hearing how my Rep, Sam Graves, justified his vote.

Anyway, once the House passed it, the bill went over to the Senate...where it was promptly killed:
Well, that was a brief victory for the speaker of the House. As expected, the Senate rejected the Boehner plan by a 59-41 vote. All Democrats voted no. Six Republican senators -- Lindsey Graham, Jim DeMint, David Vitter, Mike Lee, Orrin Hatch, and Rand Paul -- voted against Boehner, opposing the plan from the right. (Note that Hatch must really be worried about a primary challenge.)

So, the question remains: will Harry Reid and the Senate Dems substitute a bunch of their junk and send the formerly Boehner bill back to the House as we discussed yesterday? We'll find out soon enough what the final compromise will be.

Of course, in a beautiful example of just how much compromise there is when elected Dems talk about compromising (emphasis mine):
"Obvious what is being done in the House is not compromise. It is being jammed through with all kinds of non-transparent dealings, people shuffling in and out of the Republican Leader's office. We're recognizing that the only compromise that there is, is mine," Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said.

Nice. And what was that saying from just a few weeks ago? Oh yeah, that's right: Republicans should sit in the back seat. Sounds very bipartisanshipish and compromisey to me.

Anyway, if Reid does what's expected, what can we expect from his version of the Boehner bill? Higher taxes, gutting the military, fake savings and accounting gimmicks, and the largest debt increase in history, among other things. Basically, everything that Obama and the Dems wanted in the first place, and everything that will continue to damage the American economy. And, of course, if the Senate passes such a garbage bill with just a few hours left before the (artificial) deadline, then the House will have to either go along with it or be left holding the hot potato when the clock runs out.

Nice work, House Republicans. Could you be any more stupid and naive?

In the backdrop to all of this, we see new economic reports showing that the second quarter was awful, the first quarter was revised down from awful to abysmal, and now they're going back to re-calculate everything from 2007 forward because they've been jiggering the numbers since then. In fact, things are getting so bad that illegal aliens are flocking back to Mexico, where the unemployment rate is less than 5%. If that doesn't say it all, nothing does.

But it's still the Republicans who are the economic terrorists, of course.

But at least Americans are starting to see and acknowledge who's really the problem here. A recent Gallup polls shows Obama losing 10 points in favorability over just the past week, dropping to the lowest level since he took office.

It truly boggles the mind how the Republicans failed to see that they are the ones with all the leverage in this situation, and acted like the losers they apparently are.

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