Boehner's choice: Pander to tea party or
prevent shutdown (Reuters/Larry Downing)
Earlier today, President Obama invited congressional leaders from both parties and chambers to the White House for a Tuesday morning meeting designed to finalize a budget deal and avoid a government shutdown:
President Obama invited House Speaker John A. Boehner and three other Congressional leaders to the White House for a Tuesday meeting in hopes of wrapping up a bipartisan agreement on federal spending for the rest of this fiscal year and avoiding a shutdown of the government.
Boehner's response? At least initially, he hedged.
Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, said in a statement to POLITICO that “the Speaker hopes to meet with the President to discuss the need to keep the government open while making real cuts in spending, and we’re working with the White House to schedule that meeting.”
Now Fox is reporting that as of about 3:15PM Eastern, Boehner was meeting with the GOP leadership and appropriations teams to notify them that he does in fact plan to attend the meeting, so perhaps it will happen. Whatever the case, the deal to prevent a shutdown must be finalized by Wednesday to avoid violating the House's three-day rule, so refusing to meet on Tuesday morning would erect a significant roadblock.
Whether the meeting happens or not, the most important thing to understand about all this is that if John Boehner is willing to let a bipartisan funding bill move forward, there are certainly enough Democrats and Republicans who would vote for a bill to prevent a shutdown on a bipartisan basis.
The only way things can go south here is if Boehner insists on giving tea party Republicans veto power over any deal. If he does that, he might protect his role as leader of the GOP caucus, but he'd be virtually guaranteeing a government shutdown, a shutdown that could have been avoided if he were willing to move forward with a bipartisan compromise.
Update: David Rogers details the biggest areas of disagreement: policy riders like the ban on funding for Planned Parenthood and whether to include cuts in mandatory spending in the deal to avoid deeper cuts in programs like Pell Grants.