Boner should count his votes before calling a presser.

[CK_John]

This is not Algebra.

[Mass]

1. Well, the fact he did not count them shows he knows they are not there.

[FSogol]

2. Boehner is really, really bad at his job.

[MSMITH33156]

3. This was one of the smarter things he has done, actually

He knows damn well that anything he proposes to even slightly modify Obamacare is going to be tossed aside by the Senate anyway. He doesn't care if there are votes for the bat shit he is serving up. The Republicans spent the morning arguing with themselves over proposals that don't matter.

At some point, the Senate compromise bill will sale through the Senate with not just Dem support, but with many Reps voting for it as well, and then Boehner's game is up. If he blocks that vote, then the headlines will turn into "John Boehner causes default", so he is done. No leverage, he calls the vote, it will pass the House.

In the meantime, he might as well try to placate the shit kickers in his own party, so he is just serving up everything. He doesn't have the votes for it because they only have a small majority, and there are some sane Reps that realize how idiotic it is to remove the Treasury's ability to have flexibility in paying its bills (the so called "extraordinary measures&quot , and then another portion of the Reps are so insane that they won't vote for anything that doesn't repeal Obamacare, Constitutionally ban black people from being president, and change the country to the United States of Reagan.

Since their majority is not large (this is one of the smallest majorities in history since expanded to 435 seats), he has to either bring his entire party or work with Democrats. The only thing that he can bring his entire party on is to defund Obamacare, which the country has rejected and is a non-starter. He can work with Democrats and get something passed, which he will do when the compromise Senate Bill hits. But until then, he is presenting what look like "reasonable" proposals (but are actually ransom demands) with full awareness that it will struggle to pass the House cause all Dems will reject it and his extremists will as well, but he doesn't even care. It will never become law anyway, and he is desperately trying to do some image rehabilitation.

Because the way this story is going to be written is that Boehner and the House Republicans shut down the government without any way of unshutting it, and then Reid and McConnell worked together to fix the House's mess while Boehner stood their with his thumb up his ass. This is him pretending like he is doing something when he is just killing time until the Senate bill passes.