John Boehner’s clumsy endgame: House Republicans run for the exits

[DonViejo]

The only remaining questions are how high Republicans will lift the debt limit and when will they reopen government

BY BRIAN BEUTLER

The upshots from this morning’s come-to-Jesus meeting of House Republicans leaves little doubt that the debt ceiling will be lifted essentially unconditionally, before the Treasury Department runs out of the headroom it needs to finance the government. The only remaining questions are, by how much, and will the government reopen at the same time.

If it were up to John Boehner, the answers would be “for six weeks” and “no.” I imagine some politically minded Democrats aren’t terribly upset by the idea of Republicans defusing the debt limit bomb, while allowing their self-destructive shutdown to drag on for weeks. But most Democrats just want to get all of this behind them: reopen the government now, and take the debt limit out of the realm of legislative horse trading for as long as possible.

Some liberals are understandably concerned that such a brief debt limit increase, offered with the implicit understanding that the parties will use the extension to mediate the budget, will simply draw the Dems into the hostage negotiations they’ve hoped to avoid all along. That’s certainly possible. The tell will be if Republicans insist upon excluding revenues from the negotiators’ official jurisdiction. But I think the analysis places too much emphasis on position at the expense of trajectory. As a single snapshot, it looks like Dems are setting themselves up to be mugged in six weeks. But run the reel and it’s clear that Republicans are disarming their most extreme weapon.

And fortunately for Democrats, nothing’s happened in the past 24 hours to make House Republicans any more competent than they have been throughout this crisis. They probably need help to avoid an immediate debt limit breach, and that means House and Senate Democrats can exert some control over the final outcome.

full article
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/10/john_boehners_clumsy_end_game_house_republicans_run_for_the_exits/