Speaker of the House John Boehner probably had a few more cocktails and cigarettes than normal last night - it was a rough Tuesday for him. One day after a source at Standard and Poor's credit rating agency warned that passing Boehner's short-term debt-limit plan will still lead to a United States credit downgrade - the Congressional Budget Office piled on even more bad news. According to the CBO - the plan that Speaker Boehner touted as cutting $1 trillion from the deficit - ACTUALLY only cuts about $850 billion.
Not only that - droves of Republicans came out against the bill - forcing leadership to reach out to Fox so-called News talking heads like Sean Hannity and Brit Hume - as well as a number of other Conservative journalists, radio show hosts, and pundits to whip up support for the Boehner deal. But it didn't work. And now a vote on Boehner's debt-limit plan that was scheduled for today has been delayed as the Speaker goes back to the drawing board. It's becoming increasingly clear that Republicans invented this economic crisis now just 5 days away - by turning a routine housekeeping matter done 18 times during the Reagan Administration and 7 times during the Bush administration into a hostage-taking event that's now gotten out of their own control.
And the hostages are the American working people - and now the success or failure of the Obama presidency. I'm sure the real leaders of their party - Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist - are quite happy.
-Thom
(Will they still be happy next week? Tell us here.)
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