Terse, acerbic John Boehner was just on display in a middle of the night press conference that didn’t seem to serve any purpose for him or his party. With the government shutdown a little more than an hour old and his party having just voted to approve a negotiating gambit that the Democratic Senate rejected before it even became official, all eyes were on Boehner for clues about what comes next — and what tone he would set.
He ignored a couple of questions — including one about what he would say to those government workers who would be furloughed — instead sticking to talking points about legislative arcana. Then he just as abruptly walked away.
If this is going to the be the public face of the Republican Party for the duration of the shutdown, it’s going to be more politically painful than most people predicted.
Here’s the video:
White House orders commencement of government shutdown procedures. Read it here.
Statement from Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the Senate Budget Committee chair, who has been at the center of the stalled budget negotiations all year:
After blocking Senate Democrats’ attempts to start a budget conference 18 times over the past six months, Republicans are now scrambling to start a conference committee with mere minutes to go before a government shutdown. This is just the latest absurd and desperate attempt by Speaker Boehner to delay the inevitable–bringing a clean continuing resolution to the floor for Democrats and Republicans to vote on–and to continue pushing the country toward a completely unnecessary government shutdown. If Republicans were truly serious about avoiding a crisis they would pass the Senate’s short-term funding bill to remove the threat of a government shutdown immediately. We won’t negotiate while Republicans are threatening families and the economy with a crisis.
