Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

The truth is, before he even became speaker Boehner had already pledged to do anything he could to derail, delay and damage Obama’s agenda. You’re the one making up a Boehner that never existed.
Liar.

https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/the-gops-no-compromise-pledge-044311

The truth is also that once he became speaker he did his best to work with Mr. Obama.

Mr. Boehner even reached a budget deal with Mr. Obama. Then Mr. Obama caved in to leftist extremism and undermined the deal.

PBS Frontline (one hour video):
https://ga.video.cdn.pbs.org/videos/frontline/47fe314b-3938-42a5-acd0-3505ebcc37bd/16172/hd-mezzanine-16x9/00003015-mp4-1200k-16x9.mp4



Nope. I'm stating what actually happened.

Progressives always want to whitewash history and erase their crimes and misdeeds.

We're lucky progressives don't have the power that they once had under their hero Stalin or else they'd be disappearing people and erasing them from public photographs.



You shouldn't falsely accuse your betters of your own dishonesty.

Behind the secret budget deal that drove conservatives mad
A potential national default, John Boehner's resignation and a resolute Barack Obama align to temporarily halt D.C.'s dysfunction.

By BURGESS EVERETT, JOHN BRESNAHAN and SEUNG MIN KIM 10/30/2015 01:09 PM EDT Updated 10/30/2015 03:29 PM EDT

Just 12 days before a catastrophic debt default threatened to drop like a hammer on the U.S. economy, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell dialed up President Barack Obama with some bad news: They could not pass a “clean” bill raising the debt ceiling.

At that moment on Oct. 22, any chance of a budget deal was dead. Democrats wanted too much new spending, Republicans wanted entitlement changes, and there was still chaos in the House surrounding Boehner’s resignation. Speaker Boehner, Senate Majority Leader McConnell and Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were all resigned to the worst-case scenario: a pitched debt ceiling fight, followed by a potential government shutdown battle in December.

In other words, an ugly end to a year of partisan acrimony that would spill into the presidential election.

On the telephone with the Republican leaders that Thursday, the president offered Boehner and McConnell an ultimatum. Obama said the congressional GOP could lead the country into a default, or strike a bigger deal that took a shutdown threat off the table and avoided a debt crisis.

“‘We can’t do a clean debt ceiling extension.’ So he said: ‘Fine. You have two choices: The country would be forced to go back on the full faith and credit that we have around the world. Or, if you want, let’s do the budget deal,’” Reid recounted in an interview in his office, a conversation relayed to him directly by the president over the weekend. “That’s the deal we made. That’s what we did.”

The accord materialized seemingly out of nowhere, as most of Washington was focused on the House leadership drama. It ended the pattern of last-minute fiscal deals to avert catastrophe that began with the tea party's rise and GOP's takeover of the House in 2010. There's still a chance of a government shutdown in December, but the fodder for holiday season brinkmanship has been dramatically reduced.

Late last week, a budget deal seemed impossible. Republicans had almost no cards to play and felt they were backed into a corner. GOP defense hawks had telegraphed months ago that they wanted more money for the military, and the only way to get it was a deal with Democrats. Party leaders had hoped to stick by the spending caps put in place by the 2011 Budget Control Act, but that would no longer work.

“Once Republicans asked for more defense spending, that was the opening,” said one GOP senator disgusted with the deal. “We should care about defense but not make such a big deal of it” and raise spending.

Worse, the White House and Democratic leadership were ready to mount a PR offensive painting the GOP as willing, yet again, to tempt a first-ever default or another government shutdown — on the eve of early voting in the presidential campaign.

The conversation between Obama and GOP leaders created an opening to scrap those plans and get a deal done. Obama and Democrats could get the domestic spending boosts they'd long been clamoring for, as well as some fixes they sought to Medicare and Social Security programs. Republicans could claim victory on military spending and entitlement reforms. Plus the debt ceiling would finally be off the table for the rest of Obama's presidency.

Neither side loved it, but both sides knew they needed it.

Led by Boehner’s outgoing team of policy and political hands, Republican negotiators stayed in the Capitol all weekend hammering out the details.

The agreement teetered until after 11 p.m. Tuesday as budget staffers wrangled over whether the bill was truly paid for with cuts and new revenues. Finally, as the House Rules Committee convened one day before Paul Ryan was nominated as speaker, the deal was done.

“Defense hawks wanted more spending, the debt ceiling [was] coming, [there was] chaos in the House. We had zero leverage,” one Republican aide said. “We didn’t want to get jammed. … But in the end it’s a hell of a lot better than a clean debt ceiling and more spending with no offsets.”

While there had been chatter for weeks, actually reaching a deal was a shock to nearly everyone on Capitol Hill save for the Big Four congressional leaders and their closest aides.

As negotiators began talking in earnest, they agreed on one thing at the outset: No leaks to the press. The code of silence was broken at times by both parties — when word leaked of McConnell's pursuit of entitlement changes and riders, Democrats shot back that Reid and Pelosi were rejecting them. But it largely held: As GOP staffers hunkered down over a feverish weekend of drafting legislative language, even the closest allies of the leaders had little knowledge of what was afoot.

“It was very closely held. Probably better than some of our most classified materials in the federal government,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), McConnell’s chief deputy, who admitted to being in the dark.

Some lawmakers suspected something was up. But Reid’s chief of staff, Drew Willison, downplayed the optimism that was growing in the Capitol’s leadership suites, said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). There was a feeling that things could go south at any minute and send Washington back to square one.

But Democrats figured that the closer it got to the debt deadline, the more eager Republicans would be to get a deal done.

Ironically, the abrupt change in Boehner's career plans also created momentum to get something done. He immediately lost sway in the Republican conference as a lame duck. But more importantly, he suddenly had nothing to lose.

Pelosi, who says she is "rarely surprised," was stunned by his resignation, and she knew it would have a huge effect on the budget talks.

"I was surprised, and I’m rarely surprised, when he decided he was leaving. I had no clue, no clue," Pelosi told POLITICO during a lengthy interview on Thursday.

The California Democrat, who's been called on repeatedly to deliver the majority of votes during Boehner's tenure for debt-ceiling increases and bipartisan spending deals, knew that the Ohio Republican could round up only a handful of votes on another "clean" debt package. It would be far short of what was needed to pass such a measure, without additional sweeteners. Pelosi trusted Boehner, but she also knew the severe limits on his influence inside the Republican Conference and what that meant for her side.

It was a challenge and an opportunity.

"They couldn’t even get 30 votes" on a clean debt ceiling extension, Pelosi said of Boehner and House GOP leaders. "Just a freestanding clean bill, they didn’t think they could get even 30. They didn’t want to take the chance. [So] it became, 'OK, we’ll do this package.'"

Pelosi's priorities — reforming the Social Security disability insurance program, curbing premium increases for Medicare Part B enrollees and tens of billions in new domestic spending — were met. So once again she was able to deliver the bulk of the votes.

Boehner had a good working relationship with both Democratic leaders. But distrust between Reid and McConnell had grown to the point that McConnell tried to cut the Democratic leader out of the negotiations in September. In Reid’s telling, Boehner shot down that idea immediately.

“Boehner, to his credit, said, ‘No, I won’t do that,’” Reid said. McConnell “didn’t get anything out of it except bad will."

McConnell had been privately seething for weeks over Reid’s efforts to portray the congressional GOP as floating aimlessly from one fiscal crisis to another. Reid had engineered a filibuster of a defense appropriations bill in June that telegraphed the Democratic strategy: No spending deals until there was a bipartisan budget agreement.

“That was a turning point. People didn’t realize that was a turning point. The next caucus meeting, we were exultant,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Democratic leader-in-waiting.

As McConnell abandoned the appropriations process in the face of Democratic intransigence, House members began fuming about his refusal to change Senate rules to steamroll Democrats. For months nothing happened on a fiscal deal other than a narrowly averted shutdown over Planned Parenthood funding. Then McConnell dryly acknowledged in September the need for a budget deal at some point that would probably raise spending, an admission that sparked howls on the right and cheers on the left.

McConnell's calculus was straightforward: The GOP could not afford a debt default or government shutdown if it hopes to maintain control of the Senate and elect a Republican president next year.

Things were more complicated in the House — until Boehner said he was leaving.

After several weeks of disarray and Kevin McCarthy's aborted campaign for speaker, it became clear that Ryan was coming around to the top job. But what sort of leader would Boehner be if he left Ryan an imminent default and budget negotiations in shambles?

After the phone call last week with the president, Boehner, pledging to "clean up the barn” for his successor, immediately got to work. The budget talks shifted into high gear and then, in a flash, were consummated.

“It’s like releasing the steam out of the kettle,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who backed the agreement. “It relieves the pressure.”

Though the politics of the budget deal favored McConnell, Boehner and Ryan, things were much more difficult for rank-and-file Republicans. Indeed, an uninformed observer looking at the vote tallies would never know that the package came from a Republican-controlled Congress.

Large majorities of Republicans in both chambers voted against the legislation. And on Thursday, a parade of Senate Republicans, including the trio of presidential candidates, blasted GOP leaders for not extracting more concessions out of Obama.

Democrats shrugged it off as meaningless political theater.

“They got to avoid driving their car off the cliff. But that’s all they got,” Schumer said.

The minority of Republicans who stood by McConnell and Boehner bristle at this interpretation.

“It’s not a clean debt ceiling! Goodness gracious!” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). “We wanted to get something for it. In addition to having more defense spending and every bit of discretionary spending paid for, we got some major entitlement reforms.”

The two-year budget and debt-limit deal — sealed in a middle-of-the-night Senate vote five days before the U.S. government would max out its borrowing authority — relaxes the spending caps for domestic and defense programs and helps ease threats of a government shutdown until after the November 2016 elections.

The agreement boosts spending by $80 billion over two years, and beyond that allocates as much as another $32 billion for each of the next two years through a war contingency fund that is not subject to budget caps. It raises the debt ceiling until March 2017.

The deal also rolls back Obamacare's "auto-enrollment" requirement, yielding nearly $8 billion in savings. And McConnell scored a win with changes to how the Social Security disability insurance program is administered — revisions that will save $168 billion over time.

Pelosi had pushed for changes in that program as well. The White House initially balked, concerned about how progressives would react. But McConnell remembered from a 2011 conversation that Obama was aware that changes to the disability insurance could be in play as part of a budget deal, sources said, so the GOP leader tucked it away for when he needed a chit to play.

Leadership-aligned Republicans on Capitol Hill this week joked darkly about the "vote no and take the dough" crowd that was privately thrilled about the budget deal but publicly throttled the compromise. Both Reid and Pelosi said they're baffled that 167 Republicans voted against it in the House and 35 members opposed it in the Senate.

"That's two-thirds of their members who voted against honoring the full faith and credit of the United States," Pelosi said.

Though Democrats are thrilled that a deal carried by the minority made it through Congress — a rarity indeed — it wasn’t all roses for them, either. On Tuesday, as members began to review the agreement, Democrats feared a backlash from outside progressive groups. There was also nervousness that a high-profile liberal like Bernie Sanders might rally progressives against it.

That didn’t happen, a win Democrats chalk up to that show of party unity back in June. Had Republicans been able to peel off a handful of Democratic senators to pass a defense bill, it would have derailed Reid's strategy. GOP defense hawks would have gotten what they wanted, and had little incentive to play ball later on a broader budget package.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) stood up at caucus lunches at the time to preach unity, and leaders worked overtime to keep moderate Democrats in line. When the vote on the defense bill came, only Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) defected.

Democrats said they knew at that moment that they would win the fall budget fight.

McConnell, for his part, was eager to defend his majority with a show of stability, and Boehner's eventual political demise played into the compromise.

While members of Congress patted themselves on the back, Reid said the unsung hero might be Obama. The Democratic leader had doubted the White House’s negotiating acumen in the past and still blanches at his memory of the 2011 fiscal deal that Obama helped broker and that birthed the sequester.

But this time, Reid had nothing but praise for Obama, who for the first time since Republicans took the House in 2011 reached a fiscal deal with Republicans that didn’t rattle the financial markets, didn’t come together hours before a deadline and didn’t require a government shutdown.

“The president and I have grown together,” Reid said wistfully. “The way he handled this was just about as good as he can get. He was really firm. No wavering. The debt ceiling was not going to be negotiated. ‘You can come back to me with all the different bells and whistles you want. Nothing. Zero.’”

A few minutes later, Reid turned to the subject of Boehner, no longer the speaker but still a favorite of the Nevada senator. Even, Reid said, when Boehner was dropping the f-bomb on him, as he did during a budget standoff two years ago.

"I like guys that are just honest. I like a guy who doesn’t like me, and says, ‘Why don’t you go f--- yourself.’ I can handle that, OK? That was the beginning of a very warm relationship,” Reid said. “That’s the truth.”

Good article.

Mr. Boehner was the adult in the room throughout his speakership.

You seem to see Boehner as a responsible and reasonable person.

So do you agree with his assessment of the events of 1/6, that Trump “incited that insurrection “?

Huh?



At NO point did Boehner do his best to work with Obama. None.

Wrong. Mr. Boehner repeatedly did his best to work with Mr. Obama.

It was Mr. Obama's radical extremism that prevented anything from ever getting done during the last six years of his presidency.

I do not agree that a peaceful protest is an insurrection.

Mr. Trump may well have incited the peaceful protest. I have not given that matter any thought.

Apparently reading skills are not your forte.

Nor are you correct in any way.

I think you have won this thread.

Yep, Oralloy wins at the lying game, hands down.

Not sure what a prize would be, maybe a dunce cap or something.

He wins at the being objectively correct game. The game which you have lost.

Both you and Oralloy are incorrect.

That's actually patently false. You are incorrect, that's a fact.

Actually, I am 100% correct. At no time did Boehner try to work with Obama.

Check facts, not lies.

You're wrong.

Bless your heart.

Admitting that you're wrong would show maturity.

Wise people stand for the truth.

Of course you nor Oralloy know nothing about that.

Does it please you on a sick level to lie?