As we creep along towards fiscal Armageddon, thanks exclusively to the Tea Party and the mysterious hold it has on John Boner's Boehner's short hairs, US markets are gearing up to react with terror Monday morning over Boner's Boehner's complete abandoning of his responsibilities as House Speaker over the weekend. He claims “Nothing can be done”, neglecting to observe, as he has from the start of this fake “crisis”, that he can always call a vote in the House to pass the clean CR already passed by the Senate.
What is so bizarre is that no one is pointing out that everything the GOP in Congress are demanding of the president can only be supplied by Congress itself. Calls for the president to “negotiate” with John Boehner to strike a deal so he will consent to take the gun away from the world’s head are inane. What can the president, who belongs to the executive branch and thus cannot make, alter or even introduce legislation on his own, do to satisfy Boehner? If Boehner is unhappy with the ACA, Congress is the only instrument that can change it. If Boehner is unhappy with deficit spending, while it is true the president proposes a budget every year, only Congress can vote to enact one. (It has failed to do so since 2009, thanks to the Tea Party, and has relied on continuing resolutions since then to fund the government.) The fact that Boehner has been unable to satisfy either of these objectives is due to the makeup of the Congress, which most directly represents the wishes of the people, and which has rebuffed him in exact accordance with its legal function. Essentially Boehner is crying, like a baby, to be able to negotiate with—himself.
I think it is high time the Democrats in the Senate, and the president, publicly make this argument, that if Boehner and his Tea Party want the laws to change they must take their battle to the Congress, not the White House.