(Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
David Rogers:
[..] the speaker has put himself at the mercy of his right wing by designing a bill that writes off most House Democrats to get at the president.
If these conservatives now defect — and some already were doing so Monday — Boehner risks real embarrassment when the measure comes to a vote, possibly as early as Wednesday.
“Might we lose one? I don’t know,” Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said of the Boehner plan. “In our caucus, there’s overwhelming opposition.”
Boehner is talking about bringing his plan up for a vote tomorrow, but within a couple hours of unveiling it yesterday, at least three House Republicans came out against it—Jim Jordan, Tim Huelskamp, and Jason Chaffetz. Assuming Pelosi is right and virtually all Democrats oppose the plan, Boehner has very little margin for error: he needs 217 votes to pass a plan, and with at least three defections from his 239 member conference, he can lose no more than about 19 votes. Given that math, it's not a surprise that when asked whether his plan could pass, Boehner dodged, tossing the mic to Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, who was noncommittal.
Even if Boehner's plan somehow does make it out of the House, it's DOA in the Senate, because Democrats will not approve a measure that requires $1.8 trillion in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid cuts, especially one that contains no tax increases. Although the Reid plan and the Boehner plan both create Congressional fiscal commissions, Boehner makes raising the debt ceiling contingent on Congress approving his commission's plan, and unlike Reid he sets a target of $1.8 trillion in entitlement spending cuts from the commission.
The bottom-line is that if John Boehner wants to raise the debt limit, he's going to need to come up with a plan that can get the support House Democrats. His own conference will never support a plan that could make its way through the Senate, and until and unless he starts engaging with his House Democratic colleagues, we're going to be nowhere near a resolution on the debt limit. Unfortunately, nobody in Washington D.C. seems to have figured out that the easiest way to raise the debt limit is to, you know, raise it.