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Michael Evans, painter of light - full frame

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Double X


"It's very hard to negotiate with the Republicans when they can't negotiate with themselves."
Nancy Pelosi

I was listening to CNN on the way home from work and a Senator, I believe maybe Casey, was explaining something I had not heard about before. That John Boehner agreed in August to pass a clean CR if the Dems dropped the spending levels by $70 billion dollars. They did as requested, agreed to a $988 billion dollar budget and he then reneged, apparently bowing to pressure from tea baggers in his party and blowing off the deal. You can read a little bit about the whole double cross here and some earlier background here.

No wonder Harry Reid sounds like he wants to knock somebody out. Double dealing liars suck.
Reid said Boehner could not deliver on a deal the two agreed to after the August recess to fund the government because conservatives in his party have pressured him to combine the delay or defunding of ObamaCare with government funding.
Reid was echoing similar comments he made earlier in the day. He said leaders had already compromised on a deal to keep sequester-level funding of $988 billion a year as the baseline for the continuing resolution.
But he said Boehner reneged after Tea Party-affiliated Republicans demanded that ObamaCare also be part of a deal.
“I was going to call them crazies, but I shouldn’t do that,” Reid said.
Democrats have preferred a continuing resolution about $70 billion higher than the current spending bill being debated.
“That is why we agreed to that lower number,” Reid said. “That is one of the largest compromises since I’ve been in Congress. That is a big deal, $70 billion just like that.  And he couldn’t deliver.”
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Washington (CNN) – In an interview with CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent Dana Bash, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused House Speaker John Boehner of being more worried about his job than the country amid a government shutdown.
The Nevada Democrat also talked for the first time Thursday about Boehner reneging on an agreement between the two over a “clean” spending bill, and admitted he directed his chief of staff to  leak embarrassing e-mails that they say indicate Boehner changed his position on Obamacare subsidies for Congress.
Reid also followed up on his controversial comments from Wednesday, when he took issue with the idea that the Senate should vote to fund clinical trials for cancer patients at the National Institutes of Health during the shutdown.
In the interview, Reid criticized Boehner for bowing to a conservative faction of his caucus that insists on attaching anti-Obamacare provisions to a temporary spending bill needed to fund the government.
“His job is not as important as our country,” Reid said.
While a more moderate group of the GOP caucus is trying to generate support for a “clean” continuing resolution, Boehner has not agreed to bring their plan up for a vote.
“I say to my friend John Boehner–and I do like him, I’ve said that lots of times–John, if you want to really have history books account who you really are, do this,” he said, urging Boehner to take up the clean bill.
“He has to have some courage,” he added.
Clearly agitated at the memory, Reid said the two met in early September and reached a compromise about the end-of-the month deadline to pass a spending bill. Reid said Boehner agreed to pass a $988 billion spending package, $70 billion less than what the senate leader wanted.
“That was really hard,” Reid said, referring his decision to drop $70 billion. “My caucus really didn't like that. We took a real hit.”
Asked if Boehner at the time promised to deliver a clean continuing resolution, Reid said: “That's why we did it.  That's why we agreed to that lower number.  So that's one of the largest compromises since I've been in Congress.”
Republicans passed a series of bills on Wednesday with majority support that would fund national parks, the National Institutes of Health and District of Columbia operations while the government remains shut down.
But Reid has refused to take them up, saying the government should be funded all at once. The White House also issued a veto threat.
Reid, who's been known to use explosive terms to describe the tea party, defended his choice of words, especially when he calls them “anarchists.”
Why in the world wouldn't I use the term anarchy? That's what they are, they're anarchists,” he said. “They don't believe in government at any level.  That's why we have members of Congress over there today and yesterday saying finally, we're able to close the government.”
He conceded that calling them “the weird caucus,” as he’s previously done, was “probably a little over the hill,” but said he won’t give up on referring to them as anarchists.
“There's no better description I can make,” he said. “They're not blowing up buildings and they're not killing people. But they're throwing much - monkey wrenches in the wheels of government.”

Reid also commented on why his staff leaked a series of e-mails between his office and Boehner’s, which, according to Reid’s office, show Boehner worked privately to preserve health insurance subsidies for lawmakers and congressional employees before publicly moving to strip them as part of the standoff over government funding.
He was behind this all the way,” Reid said. “I did a lot of the heavy lifting, but he was part of the deal. He was there. And then to have him come and try to say, ‘this is bad, Congress is getting something others aren't getting,’ it's not true. … I thought, how could you do that?”
Democrats argue the federal support is no different than what large companies give their employees.
“I told my staff, ‘You tell his staff, if they do this, I’m going to have to go public, because this is something that is just absolutely wrong,’” he said.

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