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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."

16 of 406 comments (clear)

  1. Re:House loses most staunch Democrat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    He might have been Republican in name but seemed to vote more like a democrat.

    If you're not with us you're against us, eh? If you look at a graph, he's moderate. "More like a Democrat"? You can be moderate, you know. For a site that rails against the two party system, the comments seem to want to reinforce it.

  2. Re:House loses most staunch Democrat by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  3. Hopefully McConnell and Pelosi are next. by schwit1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Reid has already announced his departure. Too many career politicians. We need new blood.

  4. Re:House loses most staunch Democrat by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't you know? If you're a moderate, then you are like a Democrat. The Republican party is far-right extremist, and "the left" no longer exists. Even "socialist" Bernie Sanders is only about as far left as Eisenhower.

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  5. Re:House loses most staunch Democrat by tripleevenfall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You say "gridlock" like it's a bad thing.

    Every time Congress does anything, more of our rights and more of our money disappear.

    They can all take a good long vacation, if you ask me.

  6. Re:House loses most staunch Democrat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Obama will veto anything that the Republicans do anyway, even if it were to get past a filibuster in the Senate.

    Anything? Obama said he will veto if a bill has something to defund Planned Parenthood. If the Republicans let go of the whole defund Planned Parenthood thing, Obama more than likely will go along.

    It's a shame that heavily edited video came out. PP mostly does women's health screening: pap smears, breast exams, free birth control so they don't have to get abortions, and other free health services that have nothing to do with abortion - all for poor women and it's 99% of what they do. PP does very very little abortions. But unfortunately, the anti-abortionists insist on lying about and exaggerating their abortion services.

    But I don't care. See, I'm well to do. If a woman in my family want's an abortion and it's illegal, we'll hop on a plane and get it done where it's legal and there's not a goddamn thing in the World anyone can do about it.

    Banning abortion just commits poor women to have their babies.

    And the adoption myth. Adoption is viable for white healthy babies. The rest get thrown into the foster care system or into abusive families who are gaming the welfare system.

  7. Re:House loses most staunch Democrat by MachineShedFred · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and meanwhile thousands of families lose their livelihood to shutdowns and furloughs because 535 people can't work together to get anything done for the 320 million people that sent them there to do a job they refuse to do.

    --
    Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
  8. No president can raise or lower taxes by sjbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Reagan also cut more taxes than anyone in history (dangerous facts)

    No president has ever cut taxes or raised them. That's the responsibility of Congress. The President can suggest tax policies and can veto them but ultimately it is up to Congress to actually affirm or deny them. Now admittedly the President does have substantial influence on tax policy but saying Reagan or any other president raised taxes is technically incorrect. You could correctly say that he supported a tax increase or opposed one and that would be factual.

  9. Re:Government shutdown ahoy by PvtVoid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A large and increasing portion of Americans realize that their financial health is threatened by immigrants and their very existence is threatened by Muslim terrorists.

    Please elaborate on exactly how "Muslim terrorists" constitute an existential threat to America. More people die if bathtub falls and choking than die in terrorist attacks.

    Many smaller, less stable countries deal with far larger rates of things like suicide bombings without their societies being destroyed. Is America that fragile?

  10. Re:House loses most staunch Democrat by whistlingtony · · Score: 5, Informative

    Speaking as a Democrat, I'm happy to see that the R's gave in on abortion, funded women's health care, stopped oil subsidies, went along with a single payer health care system, cut back on war funding, funded basic infrastructure, etc etc etc. Oh wait, that never happened.

    What did the Democrats get that they wanted? I'm dying to know. That's a big statement. Let's see it backed up.

  11. Re:House loses most staunch Democrat by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  12. Re:House loses most staunch Democrat by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  13. Re:House loses most staunch Democrat by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Obamacare would have done much to reduce the need for Planned Parenthood's rural healthcare services had states actually expanded Medicaid as the law required. Because so many states with Republican controlled legislatures and governors offices refused to support the medicaid expansion planned parenthood's services are still needed by many poor women.

    Your argument is without merit until the medicaid expansion is fulfilled.

  14. Re:Coincedence or crisis of conscience? by quonsar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    Boehner has invited THREE Popes to speak before Congress. It is something he has hoped to facilitate for many years. He finally succeeded, and I suspect that was a greater source of his emotion than any sort of crisis of conscience you may imagine.

  15. Re:House loses most staunch Democrat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It just kills me when I see comments like this, especially when they get modded up. You people have no idea how much the government does that would immediately cease if the government completely shutdown. You might miss border control with unregulated crossing of the US borders, you might miss consular assistance if you're in a jam abroad, you might miss the justice department enforcing a breach of contract you are involved in, you might miss the coast guard if your ship sinks in US territorial waters, you might miss the FAA when suddenly there is no air traffic control. These are all things that are inherently government functions that would cease immediately if the government just stopped. And this is only what I could think of off the top of my head in 60 seconds--the max amount of my life I'm willing to waste responding to drivel on the internet.

  16. Re:House loses most staunch Democrat by imidan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    BTW, why do Democrats put contraceptives under the "women's health" umbrella when it takes two to tango?

    Because contraceptives have other uses than just preventing pregnancy. For example, oral contraceptives lower women's ovarian cancer risk, clears up acne, lighter menstruation, reduction in PMS symptoms, relief from endometriosis, and relief from polycystic ovarian syndrome.

    They also serve as a pretty effective form of birth control. But when a woman is advised by her doctor to use oral contraceptives for any of the above conditions (or anything else), and reasonably wants them to be covered by her insurance, she gets Rush Limbaugh calling her a slut. Personally, I think if we can manage to cover boner pills with medical insurance, we can probably cover birth control pills also, regardless of the reason a woman wants to take them.