Eve of Destruction

Where we are: Last night John Boehner made another attempt to get a bill through the House. But the House baggers, on orders from the idiot child running Heritage Action, shut him down. Brett LoGiurato writes at Business Insider that Heritage Action did Harry Reid a big favor.

GOP leadership in the House planned to disrupt the Senate negotiations by pushing forth its own bill to lift the debt ceiling and reopen the government.

The bill might have put Democrats including Harry Reid in an awkward spot because the GOP bill was not going to be wildly unreasonable, but because acquiescing to it would have been acquiescing to “ransom” demands.

But in the end, Harry Reid was not forced into a difficult position.

First, Heritage Action, an influential conservative group that has led the charge to “defund Obamacare” in recent months, came out and urged lawmakers to vote “no” on the House’s legislation, arguing that it didn’t do enough to change the Affordable Care Act.

About an hour later, FreedomWorks echoed Heritage’s key vote of “no,” with President and CEO Matt Kibbe saying the legislation amounted to a “full surrender” from Republicans on Obamacare.

This tells me that neither Kibbe nor Heritage Action’s Michael Needham are bright enough to find shit in an outhouse. However, today Needham told a Fox News interviewer,

“Well everybody, understands that we’ll not be able to repeal this law until 2017,” Needham said Wednesday. “We have to win the Senate and win the White House. Right now it is clear that this bill is not ready for prime time. It is clear the bill is unfair.”

And this tells me that somebody over Needham’s head just jerked Needham’s leash. But as David Kurtz said, “Thanks for the last two weeks?

Some pundits, possibly reading tea leaves, are predicting that Boehner will allow whatever bill the Senate sends to the House today to be voted on by the entire House, where everybody says there are enough votes to pass it, and have been all along. Let’s hope.

Update: Both TPM and Politico are reporting that the deal worked out between Reid and McConnell in the Senate will go to the House first, where Boehner has agreed to allow it to go to a vote, and it is expected to pass with mostly Dem votes. TPM says,

The Senate deal lifts the debt ceiling through Feb. 7, re-opens the shuttered government through Jan. 15 and sets up bicameral budget conference tasked with sending policy recommendations by Dec. 13. It will include a provision to enforce a part of Obamacare where subsidy recipients have to verify their income eligibility first. It won’t include a previously considered plan to delay a reinsurance tax under the health care law. Ultimately neither side will make big concessions.

Assuming the House passes this, the Senate will vote next. It is believed that Ted Cruz will not try to delay a Senate vote, because then he would be taking sole ownership of everything that happens after, and it is believed that he isn’t stupid enough to do that. We’ll see.