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Speaker of the House Boehner Announces Resignation
halfEvilTech writes: House Speaker John A. Boehner announced Friday morning that he will resign at the end of October. The Washington Post reports: "The resignation will end a nearly five-year reign as speaker, allowing House Republicans to approve a short-term government funding bill that will avert a shutdown of federal agencies. Boehner's hold on the speaker's gavel had grown increasingly unsteady amid threats from more than 30 Republicans that they would force a no-confidence vote in his speaker's position, which would have forced him to rely on Democratic votes in order to remain in charge. Several GOP members told The Washington Post that Boehner would step down from Congress Oct. 31."
You mean like President Ronald Reagan who raised taxes 11 times, cooperated with Tip O'Neil and the Democrats to get things done, negotiated with the Soviets and the Iranians, and granted amnesty to illegal immigrants?
Na. Boehner's not resigning until the end of October. We're good until then. After that, if a Teabagger gets in and starts grinding gears, the Republicans will lose the election because of it. I'd be scared shitless right now if I was a moderate Republican.
Boehner is a devout Catholic.
Boehner invited the Pope to speak before Congress.
During the Pope's address to the Congress, an address that specifically rebuked many Republican stances* Boehner has supported, Boehner was visibly crying.
The day after the Pope's address, Boehner announces his resignation.
We should wait and see what he actually does next following his resignation, but a part of me can't help but hope that he saw the light finally, that he saw the discrepancies between the faith he claimed, and the party he was part of for so long. One can hope.
(*yes I know he chastised both sides)
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Yeah, or he was trying to do that thing called 'governing.'
After the elections are over, the Congress needs to actually work together and compromise in order to enact legislation to keep government working. You can't just stamp your feet and demand you always get your way - that's not governing, and results in the completely dysfunctional shitty government we have today.
Oh, I know what you're thinking: "I'd rather have a gridlocked government than one that passes this socialist marxist yadda blah blah" - keep thinking that and being part of the problem. Enjoy never seeing a conservative elected to the Presidency again.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I always get a kick out of this partisan "give them everything" BS that's always quoted. The essence of deal making is no one gets everything they want. There are people on the right like yourself that fail to acknowledge one simple fact. That is that the republicans do not have the votes necessary to override the democrats against their wishes. The solution you propose is to simply refuse to play as if that's a solution. A solution with only one outcome, you shutdown government, put millions out of work, cost millions more and damage the US economy in the process in the hope that the Democrats will roll over and give you everything you want.
So Boehner is going to do the smart thing and quit before the Republican's shut down government yet again and piss off even more Voters with the resulting cost of loss of seats and less power for the party. You and the republicans like you represent the decline and eventual destruction of the republican party.
You just insulted every soldier.
Keep that in mind every time you rant against Federal employees (the largest batch of which is soldiers). And a shutdown WILL harm soldiers, particularly the ones that work for the state guard units funded by federal moneies that will NOT have their wages paid. My nephew in law is a state guardsman, the last shutdown cost him almost a 1/12th of his yearly pay. They almost ended up homeless.
There are a couple issues the republicans have gone so far to the right that they actually accomplished a far Left policy goal. Berny Sanders has been trying to shutdown the EXIM (Export/Import) Bank for almost a decade and was always thwarted by the Republicans and blue dog democrats. In their effort to be as far right as possible the Tea Party Republicans actually accomplished one of the Sanders policy goals. It's almost Ironic if it weren't funny and tragic at the same time. We've already lost 1000 jobs shutting down a bank that made the treasury money.
Not the OP, but off the top of my head -
What women's healthcare issue is it you want funded ?
Planned Parenthood and mandating health insurance company cover birth control
Where are the Republican's fighting baby killing ? They won't even stop children being butchered and their organs sold.
Planned Parenthood defunding attempt due to the small percentage of their services that are abortion related.
What oil subsidy do you want stopped ?
Any and all of them
How are they not going along with single payer healthcare
There was originally a requirement to have the government offer insurance as a competitive carrot for the insurance industry when the ACA was being negotiated. Republicans refused to consider it, while at the same time trumpeted how private industry was more efficient than government all of the time.
What infrastructure do you want funded that isn't actually the job of the states and not the federal governments ?
Interstate highways and bridges, to start.
You must have missed Obama going out of his way to refuse to negotiate with the Republicans over the last government shutdown.
And why should he? The "government shutdown" is Congress refusing to pay for bills Congress ran up. What possible benefit to the POTUS is there in playing with them on this? If they were offering something the Democrats might like in exchange it might be different. But sticking a gun to your own head and demanding my car keys isn't going to get you a "negotiation".