Speaker Boehner bows to pressure on tax deal
This time, there was no discussion. This time, House Speaker John Boehner didn’t take the chance of losing another deal to a caucus with a tendency to self-immolate.
And so when Boehner delivered the news that he had struck a deal on a Thursday afternoon conference call with House Republicans, the technology was in place to prevent rank-and-file lawmakers from voicing the kind of angry dissent that scuttled a Senate-passed payroll bill on Saturday. The five-day drama that exposed both the political naiveté of the freshman-heavy Republican Conference and the sharp limits of Boehner’s power over them ended in silence.
At no small personal political risk, Boehner laid down the law to his unruly caucus, substituting his own judgment for their collective wisdom in cutting a very slightly altered deal with President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“Speaker’s decision,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the fourth-ranking House Republican, said in introducing Boehner on the call.
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However, early reaction from rank-and-file Republicans reflected dissension in the ranks once again. One Republican member told Fox News, "I'm thinking of objecting myself. We were hung out by leadership."
But then they didn't do a damned thing about it after he rammed it through, and so here he is doing it again.
And remember one of Boehner's biggest complaints ever since the 2010 elections is that because the House Conservatives won't give him a blank check so that he can "negotiate" with Obama privately.
By the time they did their short term extension cave on FICA that you reference NO house member wanted to continue that fight anymore, because their constituents/voters were screaming at them in emails and phone calls demanding to know why they were raising middle class taxes.
And the final extension in February was passed in almost secret by the House, they wanted that whole thing to be over,
The House Republicans really backed themselves in a corner on that one making O look like the champion of middle class tax cuts and themselves as only caring about the ones for the rich. (and they are risking that again now)
Yes I understand there was a real issue there on FICA/SS to be debated but House Rs had really no way of winning it then. To win an argument on ‘FICA tax cuts must be paid for and not by tax cuts for the rich’ would have taken many months of intensive PR prep work with voters and none of that was done. Instead they just marched off the cliff