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“The Speaker will make the supplemental his first priority in the new Congress,” a Boehner aide tells TPM. That’s DC-ese for Hurricane Sandy relief.
Trying to quell the furor, Boehner is reportedly going to meet with members of the New York and New Jersey delegations this afternoon.
Meanwhile, Gov. Chris Christie will add his voice to the outrage at a press conference in Trenton at 2 p.m. ET.
Nothing in the fiscal cliff fiasco produced anything like the raw feelings and bitter resentments — on a bipartisan basis — generated by Speaker Boehner’s decision last night to adjourn the 112th Congress without taking up Hurricane Sandy relief legislation.
This morning on CNN, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) absolutely went off on Boehner and the Republican Party. King is blustery by nature, but this was exceptional even for him, and reflects a deep anger among Members at the House GOP leadership’s last act of this Congress.
Much to be written on this vote tonight. But for starters, Majority Leader Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy voted no. That’s just stunning. It is almost as though Cantor is plotting or hatching or just purchasing his coup on layaway.
An amazing moment.
After all that, it appears — as clearly as anything can appear with this House majority — that the Senate-passed fiscal cliff deal will get a straight up or down vote in the House this evening.
No amendments to the deal. Just a straight vote.
Late Update: The final vote is expected between 11 and 11:30 p.m. ET.
Later Update: House business moving more quickly. Latest word is a final vote between 10:30 and 10:45 p.m. ET.
At a second conference meeting Tuesday afternoon House GOP leaders attempted to talk their members off a ledge by offering them a stark choice: First, the House could amend the Senate’s fiscal cliff bill, tack on more than $300 billion domestic spending cuts, and toss it back into Harry Reid’s lap. That would be on the condition that 218 Republicans committed to voting for the amended bill.
Beneath that level of support, leaders said, they’d put the Senate bill on the floor for a clean up or down vote and let fate dictate the outcome. But, before asking members to commit in either direction, leaders warned the conference that amending and passing the Senate bill would be tantamount to killing it. The subtext was clear — House Republicans would take the blame for the ensuing economic fallout.
The appeal seems to have worked. Read More
From TPM Reader TA …
One thing I’ve learned about during the fiscal cliff process since the election is the so-called “Hastert rule,” which forbids a GOP Speaker of the House from being any legislation to the floor that doesn’t have the support of a majority of the GOP caucus.
Am I mistaken, or does this not, in effect, create the same super-majority requirement in the House that now exists in the Senate as a result of filibuster abuse?
I know about both, of course. But I hadn’t connected the two in this way before. Yet they do both have the same net effect under the present circumstances. Giving a subset of a single party an effective veto on government action on any sort.