Last night’s vote to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling is nothing more than a band-aid. The final roll call for the House saw 100% of the Democrats voting for the measure, but only 87 Republicans in the yea column while 144 were in the nays.
So what next?
Well we now get to the conference committee stage, which the Democrats have asked for for over a year and the Republicans have failed to participate in. Does this mean there will now be a change of heart with the GOP? Don’t count on it. Shortly after the vote John Boehner announced the Republican appointees to the conference. They are:
- Paul Ryan (Wi.)
- Tom Price (Ga.)
- Diane Black (Tenn.)
- Tom Cole (Ok.)
Only one of those four voted in favor of the Senate plan last night – Tom Cole. Paul Ryan is an extremist in budgetary theory, who saw his plan voted down by voters last fall. Diane Black and Tom Price are both teabaggers.
So Boehner hasn’t pushed the Tea Party aside, but rather gave them a very influential role in the upcoming conference. He stacked his part of the committee with a 75% majority that believes the United States government should have defaulted on its debt and remained close. This is no way to move forward and shows that Boehner and the Republicans are refusing to listen to the American people.
At this point I’ve got a big feeling the government will be shutdown again come January 15 and we will possibly default on our debt come February. And let’s think about what else we will have happening at that time. That is the height of primary season, and with Republicans scared to death of their Tea Party challengers, they will be sure to bow down to the extremists even more than the last few weeks.
Ironically the biggest culprit in this game is the Republican’s gerrymandering of congressional districts. They have built most of their districts to be as red as possible. That means a high concentration of extremists that can launch very real challenges against regular Republicans. So now redistricting could very well cost the GOP come next year. Talk about a plan that has backfired.