Posts Tagged ‘Nancy Pelosi’
Where’s Nancy?
Jul18
By John Feehery
The media loves to spend time speculating about how John Boehner and Eric Cantor are going to round up the votes to pass President Obama’s debt limit legislation.
But they haven’t asked one of the most important questions out there? Where’s Nancy?
The former Speaker and now House Minority Leader has been mostly kept out of the negotiations, and when she is included, it is mostly because they need a picture of the joint leadership.
Pelosi, though, has taken a position even more radical than those crazy Tea-Partiers, who refuse to vote on the debt limit without some spending caps put in place. She not only wants higher taxes, but she wants to make certain that there are no changes included in any entitlement spending.
It is customary that on a Presidential priority, the President’s party in the Congress works with the President to achieve a goal.
It used to be that on something controversial, like an increase in the debt ceiling (or a Congressional pay raise), that the President desperately wanted and that the President’s opposition did not really want, that the President’s party, even if it were in the minority, would provide enough votes for passage.
Nancy Pelosi, though, hasn’t promised to provide half the vote to increase the debt ceiling. In fact, she has let it be known that she will probably vote against such a debt ceiling increase.
By making this declaration, Pelosi is doing two things. First, she is killing the increase, making it impossible for Boehner to pass it, and making it likely that our nation will default.
Second, she is signaling to her campaign arm that a debt limit vote is open fodder for a campaign commercial. She is telling her ad people to lock and load against those Republicans who support the President’s position, even though the President is from her party.
One Senator has already started running commercials against a House member who will run against him, because that House member has voted to increase the debt limit in the past (even though he voted against it the last time it came for a vote in the House).
The media loves to talk about Michele Bachmann and they love to highlight Joe Walsh. But they give Pelosi a pass even though her position on this vote is every bit as irresponsible fiscally, and more irresponsible philosophically than the so-called Tea Party members.
Where is Nancy? That is the question that the pundits should be asking today.
History
Jul15
By John Feehery
I can’t tell if this current Congress is making history, defying history, ignoring history, or will soon be history.
I had dinner last night with a Freshman member of the House, and he told a group of us that most of the new members believe that they have a sacred duty to change the trajectory of American history. They believe that they have to make history now or America will be history as a world leader tomorrow.
That is why so many of them simply don’t trust the leadership on either side of the Capitol or in either party. That is why so many of them are pushing so hard for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution in exchange for a debt limit increase, a dubious, if not impossible task. And that is so many of them will vote against a debt limit increase if such an amendment is not included. In their view, we might as well have the crisis now, if such a crisis does happen, rather than later.
Many of these new members simply don’t care whether they come back or not. They believe that they have to do the right thing, no matter what their constituents might say, and damn the consequences.
This kamikaze approach to legislating has a romantic feel to it, as if these brave soldiers are going off to battle to save the Republic. My own view is that there is very little room for romance in politics. If a majority of the Freshmen lose their seats in the next election, they will be long forgotten in less than a decade, looking for jobs and wondering what might have been.
From a conservative legislator’s standpoint, the worst thing that can happen is to lose the Republican majority and have Nancy Pelosi regain the Speaker’s gavel. Perhaps Rush Limbaugh’s ratings might go up, as he would have more fun attacking her than attacking John Boehner, but any effort to reign in spending – especially entitlement spending – would be lost under a Pelosi speakership.
Many of the new members and far too many of the more experienced members simply don’t care what will happen if the debt limit is not extended. They don’t believe the experts who tell them that this would be very destabilizing for the market, very bad for our economy, terrible for jobs and awful for millions of middle class families. They can’t be convinced otherwise.
This presents a problem to the Congressional leadership and to President Obama. Obama should understand now that the only way he gets the debt limit extended is if he get Nancy Pelosi to step up and deliver more than a handful of votes. She is going to have to deliver if we are going to get a debt ceiling increased.
We live in historic times, but then again, when do we don’t?
