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Congress today is expected to pass a temporary budget as a means of keeping the government open through December.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders — House Speaker John Boehner, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — have initiated a series of budget meetings with the White House to set spending levels for the next two years.
For outgoing Boehner, the talks could be his swan song, a last chance to square a deal with the President before he steps away from the gavel in October.
The question now is not whether Boehner will come to an agreement with President Obama, but how the terms of these budgetary negotiations will resonate among the fractious Republican party that called for his ouster.
Boehner, the victim of a recent bullying campaign within his own caucus, announced on Friday that he’d step down as Speaker of the House after three-dozen hard-line House Republicans pressured him to comply with their plans to defund Planned Parenthood as a key bargaining chip in their budget talks to keep the government open through October.
If Boehner didn’t comply with the Planned Parenthood cuts, they’d explore a procedural motion to remove him from the seat and call for the election of a new Speaker.
Call it a Pyrrhic victory. For the first time in nearly five years, lame duck Boehner now finds himself in a somewhat enviable position. The House Speaker controls what bills reach the floor, and now, with one foot out the door, he can do pretty much whatever he wants.
Boehner has never subscribed to the notion that Federal agency shutdown threats are a viable negotiating tactic, so a short-term funding of the government is pretty much certain, which means Planned Parenthood won’t be defunded (at least not this month). And with an exit date of Oct. 30, he similarly won’t suffer any consequences for his collaboration with the President to agree on a two-year budget deal, much to the chagrin of Tea Party-affiliated members of the House and other anti-establishment Republicans.
Boehner has nothing to lose at this point. Who knows, maybe this will be his chance to stick it to the members of his own party with whom he has found himself embattled for years. Political site The Hill yesterday posited that Boehner might use the opportunity to clear some "trickier issues from the docket"; in other words, to move on policy that would otherwise be blocked by Tea Party votes but in cases where he has Democratic support.
With this kind of freedom, and with an end to his personal role in the consistent GOP infighting now in sight, he might be asking himself why he didn’t resign a long time ago.
Maggie Moran, who is well-connected in New Jersey and New York Democratic politics, has established Moxie Strategies in Asbury Park, NJ.
Husch Blackwell Strategies has added FleishmanHillard alum Michael Slatin as a principal in its public affairs group.
Rory Cooper, a veteran Republican operative and policy specialist, has joined Teneo’s Washington office as senior managing director in its strategy & communications practice.
Brian Fallon, who served as national press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential run, is signing on next month as Vice President’s Kamala Harris’ campaign communications director.
TikTok is nothing more than a Chinese propaganda tool that poses “a grave threat to America’s national security and, in particular, impressionable children and young adults,” say two Congressmen who want the platform registered as a foreign agent.
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