So will House Speaker John Boehner finally stand up to his crazy caucus and
start governing? How he deals with the opposition to the deal he's working on with Nancy Pelosi on a permanent "doc fix"—repealing an old formula used to figure out how much to reimburse physicians for treating Medicare patients that seriously shortchanges those physicians. Now that the deal is close to being done, Boehner's crazies are
raising hell.
"At a minimum, we should be honest with the American people," Rep. Raúl Labrador, R-Idaho, said today at the monthly event Conversations with Conservatives. "If what we're going to try to do is just undo the problem that we have with the doc fix, then just say that. Just say that you're going to add this much money to the deficit by doing this. Let's just be honest." […]
Finding a permanent fix to the formula costs more than $170 billion, the Congressional Budget Office found.
"I find it very disagreeable that somehow a fix means we just add it to the debt. That's the fix?" Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., said today. "That's not a fix. That's the same old Washington way of doing things that's been going on under both parties for decades now."
"I don't think that it works with any conservative principles that I hold," he continued.
Here's Boehner's big test with his own opposition. After the Homeland Security
funding debacle, the crazies are still fuming. "People aren't going to forget it here in the Capitol,"
warns Huelskamp. The chances that that clownshow could actually organize to achieve a coup are slim. But they can sure continue to be a headache for Boehner.
But they'll always be a headache for him, regardless of what he actually does. His choice is to have that headache and let them keep calling the shots, or have that headache and actually, maybe, get some governing done.