White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest today openly mocked House Speaker John Boehner (R – OH) for suggesting there ought to be a Congressional vote on the new US war with ISIS, insisting that officials reacted to the comment with “some skepticism.”
Boehner, who backs the war, said he would be happy to call Congress back from recess to hold a debate on the war, saying he believes they ought to explicitly debate the conflict, and would like the president to provide language on the scope of the conflict.
Earnest insisted that the White House still resents Boehner for not pushing through votes on corporate inversions and immigration reform, saying that the White House didn’t feel like it ought to present a war proposal when the Speaker push through previous proposals on completely different issues.
At any rate, the White House insists, they did have two meetings with “top Congressional aides,” something they consider more or less as good as actually voting on the war. President Obama insists he doesn’t need Congressional backing for the war.
The White House is just taking its cue from individual Americans who have been scoffing at the notion of Congress doing useful for anyone other than themselves for a long time now.
It is the Congress who has neutered itself and made themselves a laughing stock and not worthy of respect. They did this to themselves.
And the Executive branch, despite their protestations of executive power have unconstitutionally usurped the power of the Congress who willingly give it up in their constant pursuit of getting re-elected – because that is all that they really want to do…oh, and reap the financial rewards of being a Congresscritter, of course.
There was a rumor last spring after the current baseball commissioner announced his retirement at the end of the current season that George W Bush might make a good replacement. Boehner is like the spectre of Dubya as baseball commissioner. Useless and inept and feckless. Ultimately, for baseball, cooler heads prevailed. The same cannot be said for Congress. Boehner doesn't have a clue how to lead. He has been reduced to a figurehead. I have absolutely no sympathy for what he has done to himself and the position of Speaker of the House.
I remember the days when the Speaker of the House at least made an attempt, and was usually successful, at speaking for the entire House, not just one party. There is no such things as cooperation anymore in Congress, and the American people are the ones who will suffer the consequences.
Anndoc, sorry for the rant-bomb on your thread…it just slipped out.
I fully sympathize.
I'll see your rant-bomb and raise it with some self-loathing.
Yes, members of congress, by and large, did it to themselves. But it was an 'eyes-wide-open' deed. They have no real complaints about how it worked out.
But we also did it to ourselves by rel-electing them individually – despite their blatant shortcomings – at about the same % rate as we disapprove of them collectively – also with our eyes-wide-open.
Now we've reached the point where elections and Congress are habitually dysfunctional and most of the downstream activities that flow from them, like the Administration, Courts, Military and Security, Welfare, the Economy, Education and so on are in terminal decay. Yet we can find nobody with the wit and wisdom to come up with a fix and are instead turning to political bloodlines of the Great Houses that got us into this mess in the first place.
We should return our Exceptionality Certificates to the front office and make a fresh start.
And therein lies the problem. For a nation that prides itself on experimentation and discovery and technological advances, we have become a society that is loath to change. I mean real change…like the change that would be necessary to put the warmongers and ideological miscreants out on their asses. That kind of change isn't going to happen with the current atmosphere of complacency that prevails.
The social nationalism/islamization/militarization/third world war on the herizon.
the armies of the roman empire continued to carry the senatus populousque romanus standard for hundreds of years after the fall of the republic.
It is the USA citizen who loses and it is they that must take back the country, that has been overthrown by the POTUS and the Congress!
It would be a lopsided vote so who cares. Boner already called ISIS barbarians that want to kill us so the debate would be who could outdo who on bullshi**ing about the threat to the "homeland".