Demanding that the Democrat controlled Senate should put the President’s agenda into law and pass it was a smart move on John Boehner’s part. Stalling and kicking the can down the road by President Obama is slowly becoming apparent.
Having made that move, there is one good response for President Obama and the Senate: Do it. Do something.
The belief now is that sequestration is going to happen. The massive adjustment that America needs to correct fiscal imbalance is going to happen. When the results become clear about a year later, the government will be back at work to make adjustments. Well, they would be except they will be running for reelection on the promises they will make to fix it if they are put back into office.
The deal on that is that many Americans will have developed disdain for incumbents and will remove them. If the President is adept at political positioning, the weight of failure will be placed on Republicans. If he is inept at that, voters may shake all incumbents. A good shake up is needed, however that should be with an eye on improving the quality of representation.
I see no evidence that Americans are addressing that responsibility, to improve how they select and elect representatives.
“With eye on 2014, GOP welcomes Boehner's Senate-first strategy
By Russell Berman - 02/16/13 06:00 AM ET
By demanding Senate Democrats act first on major legislation, the House Speaker may help Republicans win back the upper chamber.Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is passing the buck to the Senate and, in the process, he's lending a big hand to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.)
Boehner's move to force the Democratic-led Senate to take the lead on enacting President Obama's agenda puts him squarely in line with a top McConnell priority — wresting control of the upper chamber from Democrats.
The Speaker has made it clear that he believes his one-on-one negotiations with Obama over the last two years allowed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and his caucus to escape responsibility for taking politically-tough votes in the last two years, helping Democrats not only keep control of the Senate, but expand their majority in 2012.
As Boehner put it on Thursday, "those days are over."The House, he indicated, has no intention of acting on the agenda Obama laid out in his State of the Union on Tuesday until Senate Democrats prove they can pass it first. That means no move to hike the minimum wage, no major gun-control legislation, no big climate change bill.
That strategy has some Senate Republicans salivating, hoping they will finally get to see vulnerable Democrats take the politically dangerous votes that Reid protected them from taking in 2011 and 2012."
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