On the heels of
a clash between aides to conservative House Republicans and a senior aide to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz over Cruz's scheme to use the the threat of a government shutdown to defund Obamacare,
Business Insider's Josh Barro
makes the case that Cruz is "making life miserable for House Republicans."
If you believe the press accounts, there are 30 or 40 House Republicans who won't vote for a continuing resolution that funds Obamacare. With 30 defections, Speaker John Boehner can't get what he desperately wants: 217 Republican votes for a bill that protects his key spending priority (maintaining low spending levels from sequestration) while avoiding a fight over Obamacare.
But if 30 to 40 House Republicans won't vote for a CR that funds Obamacare, that means 190 to 200 of them would vote for such a CR. People talk about the "radicalized House GOP" but on this particular issue, most House Republicans aren't radicalized. They've been dragged into this fight, unwillingly, by Cruz. And that's why they're so irritated.
Barro makes some good points, here, but those points actually show that no matter how big of a clown Ted Cruz may be, House Speaker John Boehner's problem is ultimately a problem of his own creation.
The key here is what Barrow says in the first paragraph quoted above. Boehner wants to a pass a spending bill that permanently locks in sequestration for domestic programs but gives some relief to defense contractors, and the only way he can do that is with 217 Republican votes. (It would normally be 218, but the House has two vacancies at the moment, and will soon have three.)
So, why can't Boehner look to Democrats for votes to pass his spending bill? Follow below the fold for the answer.
The reason Boehner must rely exclusively on Republicans to pass his plan is simple: It would be an even worse deal for Democrats than the 2011 debt limit deal that created sequestration in the first place. Under the terms of that deal, there would be a spending cap of $1.058 trillion for the upcoming fiscal year. That would subject to sequestration, but the thing about sequestration is that it can either be eliminated, either through repeal or some other combination of revenue and spending cuts. Boehner's plan is to unilaterally break the 2011 deal, setting spending at sequester levels plus a $21 billion kickback for defense contractors.
There's no way House Democrats will support making sequester-level spending permanent without any concessions, so if Boehner was going to pass his bill through the House, he would have needed to rely on Republicans alone. But as remarkable as it is that Boehner can't get them to support his lopsided deal, it is really nothing more than an amusing sideshow, because even if he had managed to get the votes, the bill would have been dead on arrival in the Senate.
Therefore, to the extent that Ted Cruz is driving Republicans up the wall, it's only because he is making it hard for them to pass a message bill that has no chance of going anywhere. But you can't blame Ted Cruz for the fact that John Boehner thought it was a good idea to try to pass such a pointless bill in the first place.
Boehner agreed to the 2011 debt limit deal. He said he got 98 percent of what he wanted. And for Boehner to nonetheless try to break that deal in order to get an even harsher spending deal is every bit as crazy as Ted Cruz's scheme to defund Obamacare.
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