House GOP Strategy On Senate Bill
UPDATE: House Could Add $300 Billion In Cuts But It Doesn't Sound Good
Report: Amendment Effort Dead, House Will Pass Senate Bill As Is

ABOVE THE POST UPDATE

Done.

Members email from floor: spending amendment doesn't have 218. Not likely to pass. Rules getting ready to move on Sen deal as is.

House has finished with its three non-fiscal cliff votes. Just recessed subject to the call of the chair.

But the GOP will definitely grow some balls in the next two months. Related: Lucy totally promises to leave the football on the ground next time.

Official: No amendments, straight up passing the Senate bill.

Original Post:
Word is starting to leak out of the GOP conference about the options Boehner is laying out.

Boehner presented 2 options to R's. One would be to amend #fiscalcliff bill with cuts and see if it could pass and send to Senate.

The other option is just to bring the Senate bill to the floor for an up or down vote.

Sounds like Boehner is trying to find out if there are 218 Republican votes for the current tax scheme in the Senate bill (over $400k, etc) plus cuts or...will the purity brigade say they can't support any tax hikes?

I sympathize with the "no new taxes period" gang but voting no on offsetting cuts means the Senate bill will likely pass as is thanks to Pelosi whipping her votes and enough squishes.

The GOP needs to pass the spending cut amendment. It will probably kill the Senate bill anyway and we'll start over on Thursday.

Process: The House is going to hold 3 votes unrelated to the fiscal cliff. The idea is to get everyone on the floor, find out how many members are there (what's the magic number to pass something?) and to have them in place so the leadership can whip them.

It'll be 25-30 minutes at least on these votes, then we get to the main event.

UPDATE: $300 billion in unspecified cuts. They kind of just picked a number I guess. So, $30 billion a year over 10 years or the amount of the unemployment insurance extension in the Senate bill. This when we're running $1 trillion a year deficits.

And it doesn't sound likely we'll even get that out of the House (let alone the Senate and Obama).

Oh well, it was fun to think the GOP might have had some backbone left.

But hey...they've kept their powder dry and this compete capitulation will bring us one step closer to victory in two months!

Let It Burn...it's not a suggestion, it's an observation.

posted by DrewM. at 06:19 PM

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