After both Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan threatened to eliminate Obamacare, Speaker John Boehner announced that it’s not going to happen. TPM:

The chances of a government shutdown at the end of the month keep going down.

On Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner avoided one more tripwire when he rejected conservative demands that Republicans use government funding legislation to pick a fight over defunding the Affordable Care Act.

“Trying to put Obamacare on this vehicle risks shutting down the government,” Boehner told reporters at his weekly Capitol briefing.”That’s not what our goal is. Our goal is to reduce spending.”

Assuming the Senate passes its spending measure this week, the House will have to take it up and clear it by March 27 — the day the government’s budget authority expires. If Democrats support the bill in large numbers, that shouldn’t be a problem. But the question is whether House Republicans will oppose it this time around now that conservatives have endorsed using it to pick a fight over Obamacare.

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The Republicans have the upper hand in dealing with the sequester. If 2012 had not happened and their ability to be as incompetent as Democrats not been so clear (or if I were a fan of conspiracy theories, which I am NOT), I might think they planned this.  They lost the first few rounds of this tit for tat with the White House on the budget to win when they wanted to.  And their laissez faire attitude towards the whole thing reminds me of Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men when he instructed his team to never look upset or surprised — jut act is if everything was going just as they planned.  They have become the cat who ate the canary.

President Obama, however, seems to have lost his coating of cool.  At least his Administration has.  This is why I think you can tell the GOP is winning.  One could make the same argument about what happens when you call someone Hitler; it means you are losing the argument.  The same can be said of fear mongering.

If you believed some from the Obama Administration, you might expect to wake up tomorrow morning to hoards of locusts.  Education Secretary Arne Duncan, for instance has told multiple news outlets that approximately 40,000 teachers will lose their jobs and that the pink slips are already going out.  Some of that may be true but it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the sequester.

If this was just based on who looks calmer, the GOP currently holds the lead.  The cause of their upper hand is another story.  Most Americans just aren’t paying attention.  Several polls indicate they aren’t worried about the cuts because they don’t know about them.  My feeling is that this is a lot like a bad sequel to a bad movie.  This is Police Academy 4.  We’ve been to the brink, we’ve even gone over it and survived.  How is this any different?

And then we come to how they are winning.  First, they are getting spending cuts that they claim they want (they have done nothing to make me think they are more interested in cutting spending than the Democrats).  Secondly, John Boehner said that if we want to prevent the sequester, “the Senate needs to get off of their asses.”  Ouch.  Could that be a dig at Mitch McConnell?

See the Budget Control Act of 2011 http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41965.pdf

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Welcome to this week’s edition of The Daily Banter Mailbag! Today, Bob, Ben and Chez discuss John Boehner’s political future, the tone-deaf Republicans and resolutions for 2013!

The questions:

1) I hope this one gets in in time to make the mailbag, but how the fuck did Boehner manage to hang onto his job??? Just yesterday Chris Christie was tearing him a new one in front of the whole country and today he’s reelected Speaker of the House. What gives?
– Sophia

Chez: I’m honestly a little surprised Boehner didn’t get ousted. Yeah, there’s a tendency, even among the insurgents, not to make too many waves considering what they’re up against at the moment, but Boehner really did get the shit kicked out of him yesterday. The only thing I can think of is that there are enough “moderate” — a term I use relatively — House Republicans who figure Boehner’s the best reptilian politician to sit at the head of the table and that appointing a true nut-job would basically be suicide. Honestly, who knows why those idiots do what they do anymore?

Bob: I hope he savors it because two years from now he’ll only be Speaker of His Barstool from the Great State of Merlot at “P.J. O’Filibusters” bar & grille on Capitol Hill. He’ll either be replaced by Eric Cantor or preferably a Democrat if they can take back the House. As for the vote yesterday, I thought for sure he’d be out.

Ben: How did Boehner manage to hold on to his job? How do any major Republicans hold on to any of their positions? There’s no use applying logical thinking to what the Republicans do – they’re batshit crazy, and the less brain cells they display, the higher up they get in the party. I mean, this is a party that thought Sarah Palin was seriously capable of being Vice President of the United States. Boehner is a complete joke, therefore he keeps his job.

2) What proves most from this week that the right hasn’t learned anything since the election and will never change, the fiscal cliff fiasco, the Sandy aid bill debacle, or the conspiracies about Hillary Clinton faking her brain injury so she doesn’t have to testify about Benghazi? Inquiring minds want to know.
– Travis

Bob: Probably the Sandy aid bill, but I’m sure they’ll pass it today. However, they allowed the Violence Against Women Act expire and I’d say that’s the most tone-deaf thing the congressional Republicans have done since the election. They need more women to vote for them and so they do… this? They’re simply incapable of changing.

Ben: Er, all of the above? I know it’s pretty scary to watch, but it’s doing wonders for the Democrats. The more of this insanity, the better as Obama is learning how to play them like a fiddle. They’ve lost the public, and the Democrats are finally making this pay off legislatively speaking (the fiscal cliff being a pretty good example).

Chez: This is a trick question, right? The answer is all of them? I think that both the fiscal cliff and the Sandy incident that drew the wrath of Christie proved that the conservative power structure will continue to be political and economic nihilists, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it’s hurting them. But yeah, Fox News and its ilk throwing out Clinton-as-the-Devil-era conspiracy theories — ones that of course involve Benghazi — is probably the most absurdly damning. It proves that they’re not only not going to get better — they’re apparently going to get much worse. I’m both curious and terrified to see what the bottom looks like for these people.

3) What are your biggest resolutions for 2013?
–KV

Chez: To stop being so obvious.

Bob: I have to get back on my bike. I haven’t even looked at it since before the election. But it’s going to really, really hurt.

Ben: Bit of a boring response here, but my life pretty much revolves around The Daily Banter. So my resolution (like last year) is to make it much, much better. Oh, and to stop breaking bones in my body as I seem to get at least two major injuries per year.

—– -

Got a question for the mailbag? Email us at TheDailyBanter@gmail.com!!!

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From Yahoo! News:

After a late-night decision from House Republicans to delay a vote to provide billions of dollars in relief to states hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy, House Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday attempted to tamp down a backlash, telling colleagues he would bring up one part of the aid package to a vote at the end of the week. New Jersey and New York Republicans said Wednesday afternoon that Boehner promised them he will vote on a $10 billion extension for the government’s flood insurance fund—set to run out next week—on Friday.

The speaker said he will bring the other $51 billion in aid to a vote January 15.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, blasted Boehner earlier on Wednesday for not putting the bill up to a vote. Christie warned Boehner and the Republican House majority that they would feel the wrath of outspoken New Jersey and New York politicians.

New York “Gov. [Andrew] Cuomo and I are not wallflowers. We are not shrinking violets,” Christie said. He called the delay in aid “callous” and an act of putting politics over what’s best for the victims of a major storm trying to rebuild.

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From TPM:

In response to President Obama’s extensive comments about the fiscal cliff at the White House Wednesday afternoon, House Speaker John Boehner left himself little if any room to continue negotiations.

Here’s the key piece of Boehner’s brief comments from his appearance before reporters in the Capitol:

“Tomorrow the House will pass legislation to make permanent tax relief for nearly every American — 99.81 percent of the American people,” he said, referring to his own so-called Plan B. “Then the President will have a decision to make. He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill, or he can be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history.”

That sounds like he’s giving Obama a choice between Plan B or the fiscal cliff. No more negotiations over a broader deficit reduction plan.

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From Reuters:

President Barack Obama held his ground on the “fiscal cliff” on Tuesday, insisting on higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, while Republicans showed increasing disarray over how far they should go to compromise with Obama’s demands.

With less than a month left to confront the budget cuts and tax increases that will begin taking effect in January unless Congress acts, Obama dangled the possibility of lowering tax rates as part of a broad U.S. tax code revamp in 2013.

But he again insisted, in an interview with Bloomberg Television, that tax rates for the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers must rise in any deal by the end of the year to avert the assorted measures known as the fiscal cliff.

Obama, a Democrat, may face resistance from his own party if and when he’s forced to be specific about how he would cut the cost of entitlements, such as the Medicare health insurance program for seniors.

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In response to President Obama’s offer last week to hike taxes by $1.6 trillion and to exempt Medicare and Social Security from cuts to beneficiaries, the Republicans have finally presented a counter offer. From Buzz Feed:

House Republicans put their criticisms of President Barack Obama’s fiscal cliff package to paper Monday with an offer of their own.

The $2.2 trillion Republican package includes $800 billion in revenue from tax reform and $600 billion in health care savings, among other proposals.

The plan, detailed in a letter that was sent from House Republicans to the White House on Monday, is based in principle on a proposal originally engineered by Erskine Bowles, the co-chair of the president’s deficit-reduction commission.

And of course, the counter offer does not include raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans and focuses almost entirely on spending cuts. Given Obama has stated explicitly that he will not accept a deal that doesn’t raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans, the counter proposal is completely pointless. You can read the offer in full here:

boehner offer

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The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From Huff Post:

House Speaker John Boehner says President Obama should drop his proposal to avoid automatic tax increases and spending cuts at the end of the year, and instead embrace a plan outlined by Erskine Bowles — co-chair of the White House’s commission on fiscal responsibility — at a congressional hearing last November.

“The new revenue in the Bowles plan would not be achieved through higher tax rates, which we continue to oppose and will not agree to in order to protect small businesses and our ailing economy,” Boehner writes in a letter (PDF) to Obama. “Instead, new revenue would be generated through pro-growth tax reform that closes special-interest loopholes and deductions while lowering rates. On the spending side, the Bowles recommendation would cut more than $900 billion in mandatory spending and another $300 billion in discretionary spending. These cuts would be over and above the spending reductions enacted in the Budget Control Act.”

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Michael Cohen in the Guardian makes a persuasive argument that Republicans don’t have much to gain by holding the economy to ransom again during the ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations:

In the end, neither side has all that much to gain from dragging the fiscal cliff argument out. Now that President Obama has won re-election, and doing short-term damage to the economy is no longer in the political interests of Republicans, the outlines of a budget deal become that much easier to achieve. Moreover, all those House Republicans have to run for re-election in two years – and would prefer to do so in more optimal economic conditions, rather than in an economy undermined by growth-reducing austerity policies.

There were once good political reasons for Republicans to have a dalliance with economic calamity; no longer is that true. And it’s worth remembering that in virtually every single showdown between Obama and the Republican Congress in his first term (from the tax cut showdown of 2010 and the budget battle of early 2011, to the debt limit negotiations in the summer of 2011 and finally the payroll tax confrontation in the beginning of 2012), it has been Republicans who have surrendered, with far less than half a loaf. In its brinkmanship, the GOP likes to dance right up to the edge; they are far less inclined to take the plunge.

I think Cohen is correct in his analysis – Americans believe that President Obama’s economic policies are heading the country in the right direction, and explicitly rejected austerity at the polls in November. GOP strategists know this and will not be keen to shoulder the blame for a break down in the negotiations, making a decent deal for the Democrats a good possibility. It looks like Obama is sticking to his guns on raising taxes for the wealthy, meaning the onus is on Republicans to budge from their previous position on taxation.

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It’s too early to claim victory, but the GOP’s unified front in regards to taxation appears to be breaking. From the Guardian:

Cracks in Republican opposition to tax rises for the wealthy grew bigger on Wednesday as Barack Obama increased pressure on the party to accept a deal to resolve the fiscal cliff crisis before the holidays.

Obama, emboldened by his election victory, proposed a bill to stop 98% of taxpayers facing automatic rises in January but imposing increases on the remaining 2% of the highest earners. Deep cuts in spending would be left until next year. “My hope is to get this done before Christmas,” he said.

Republican congressman Tom Cole, a former chairman of the national Republican congressional committee, broke ranks to say the party should accept Obama’s tax proposal. He went further even than three of his Republican colleagues who have said over the last week they might consider accepting rises.

Although there was this today in response to Cole’s announcement:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) signaled no new willingness to bend on raising taxes for the rich Wednesday after one of his more respected GOP colleagues suggested the party should take President Barack Obama’s offer to extend Bush-era tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans.

What does this mean? I’m betting they cave to Obama on this – this is the first time in recent memory the GOP has not presented a completely unified front when it comes to taxation, and any signs of weakness means internal debate must be fierce. Obama knows this and will most likely stick to his guns and watch the Republicans fight it out amongst them, then hit them when they’re even weaker. And as we’ve seen, that’s the way to beat them.

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