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Republican House Speaker John Boehner, just like his GOP predecessor Newt Gingrich is a Big Government, go-along type of personality. Boehner hasn’t written his books yer, but he is not a movement type of POL.

Now, the Democrats are boasting that they will retake the House in November.

While this is doubtful, the GOP House Leadership should be purged in January just as a matter of their incompetence to drive a conservative narrative.

Chris, GOP House Speaker Rep. John Boehner has been a “WEAK” leader.

Boehner has the power of the purse and must use it against the left-wing ideology of the Obama Administration. He needs to suck it up and be more aggressive.

I mean, Boehner has the votes…..use them!

Of course, the House GOP blinked because it was the ONLY rationale course of action.

House Speaker John Boehner says he has reached agreement with the Senate to renew the payroll tax cut before it expires Dec. 31.

The Ohio Republican said in a statement Thursday that he expects to pass a new bill by Christmas that would renew the tax break for two months while congressional negotiators work out a longer-term measure that would also extend jobless benefits for millions of Americans and prevent doctors from absorbing a big cut in Medicare payments.

The GOP House has suffered only a “flesh wound” as one of my Facebook friends has said.

But, the entire flap was handled very badly and the GOP House Caucus should be looking at some better leadership.

The House GOP leadership have created a fiasco out of a win-win compromise on the payroll tax cut extension – and they did it right before Christmas.

Bravo, GOP establishment morons in Washington.

Even the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page is giving you an #EPICFAIL.

GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously said a year ago that his main task in the 112th Congress was to make sure that President Obama would not be re-elected. Given how he and House Speaker John Boehner have handled the payroll tax debate, we wonder if they might end up re-electing the President before the 2012 campaign even begins in earnest.

The GOP leaders have somehow managed the remarkable feat of being blamed for opposing a one-year extension of a tax holiday that they are surely going to pass. This is no easy double play.

Republicans have also achieved the small miracle of letting Mr. Obama position himself as an election-year tax cutter, although he’s spent most of his Presidency promoting tax increases and he would hit the economy with one of the largest tax increases ever in 2013. This should be impossible.

The House GOP should reconsider their position, pass the two month extension and go home for Christmas.

What a CLUSTER……

Chris, at least Boehner got rid of his fake and bake orange tan/complexion.

One change at a time, eh?

Oh My!

President Barack Obama intends to deliver his much-anticipated speech laying out his jobs agenda and plan to cut the federal deficit on Sept. 7 to a joint session of Congress. Mr. Obamas timing steps directly on a Republican presidential debate scheduled for that same evening in Simi Valley, Calif.

The president sent a letter to congressional leaders Wednesday requesting time to address a joint session on Sept. 7 at 8 p.m.

Our Nation faces unprecedented economic challenges, and millions of hardworking Americans continue to look for jobs, Mr. Obama wrote. It is my intention to lay out a series of bipartisan proposals that the Congress can take immediately to continue to rebuild the American economy by strengthening small businesses, helping Americans get back to work, and putting more money in the paychecks of the Middle Class and working Americans, while still reducing our deficit and getting our fiscal house in order.

It is our responsibility to find bipartisan solutions to help grow our economy, Mr. Obama continued, and if we are willing to put country before party, I am confident we can do just that.

Good for the GOP Presidential contenders?

NBC and Politico will call the shots, but a GOP debate after the President’s speech would be a full two hour prime time television rebuttal of the President.

Of course, the debate is only being carried on MSNBC.

My bet is the debate will be cancelled and rescheduled until a later date. Now, agreeing on that date may be problematic.

Remember last week when Speaker Boehner wrote the President about Obama Administration regulations and the American economy. Here is my post.

Well, President Obama HAS responded.

President Barack Obama says his administration is considering seven new government regulations that would cost the economy more than $1 billion a year, a tally Republicans will pounce on to argue that Congress needs the power to approve costly government rules.

In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, Obama lists four proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules and three Department of Transportation rules estimated to cost in excess of $1 billion. One of the proposed EPA rules – an update to the health-based standard for smog – is estimated to cost the economy between $19 billion and $90 billion.

The letter, dated Tuesday, comes as the Republican-controlled House prepares to consider legislation that would require congressional approval for any new regulations that would impose a significant cost on industries.

The four environmental regulations, which target air pollution and coal residue primarily from coal-fired power plants, have already been attacked by House Republicans, who have said they would kill jobs and harm the economy.

The letter was in response to a Boehner request last week for more details from the president on the proposed costs of the most expensive regulations under consideration by his administration. Obama’s administration has identified 219 proposed regulations this year with a cost to the economy of more than $100 million.

Obama said a number of regulations being contemplated are in such preliminary stages of review that they have no reliable cost estimates.

The president said the seven proposals he did identify are not final and that his administration will give careful consideration to cost-savings. He said his administration already has made changes that have saved more than $10 billion in regulatory costs over the next five years, and said new regulations must meet cost-saving requirements that he ordered earlier this year.

He also defended his regulatory record, saying the cost of final rules adopted in 2007 and 2008, during the administration of President George W. Bush, were higher than in the first two years of his administration.

Now, I see the Obama Administration’s strategy = blame the Bush Administration.

I don’t think this is going to fly in the GOP dominated House, especially when you have American business already complaining.

Update:

Here is a piece in the Wall Street Journal that directly answers the problems with regulations and the Obama Administration.

Among the core assumptions of modern liberalism is that future regulations have no more effect on the economy than future taxes, as if expectations don’t matter and businesses don’t prepare now for their costs tomorrow. President Obama’s letter to John Boehner yesterday is a classic of the genre.

Last week the Speaker asked the White House to disclose any federal rules in the works with economic costs of $1 billion or more. Proposed or final rule-makings are defined as “major” when their estimated annual costs exceed $100 million. The Obama regulatory agenda for 2011 contains 219 such items. Last year, that figure was 191, versus the combined total for the first two years of the Bush Administration of 103. Amid this surge, Mr. Boehner’s underlying point was that the regulatory ambitions of the Obamanauts are redefining “major,” much in the way trillion is the new billion for government spending.

Mr. Obama responded by identifying seven pending major rules topping $1 billion, like the Department of Transportation’s federal motor vehicle safety standard No. 111 for rearview mirrors ($3 billion) and the Environmental Protection Agency’s ozone regulations (as much as $90 billion). But even that understates the costs, as Mr. Obama explains at length. The regulatory agenda is “merely a list of rules that are under general contemplation” and “merely proposed” and “includes a large number of rules that are in a highly preliminary state, with no reliable cost estimate.”

In other words, regulations that the Administration plans to issue don’t count. The President’s health-care plan doesn’t affect hiring because it doesn’t really kick in until 2014, and the Dodd-Frank financial reregulation isn’t a drag on lending because no one knows what dozens of agencies may do, except that it will be very expensive.

Mr. Obama adds that “it is extremely important to minimize regulatory burdens and to avoid unjustified regulatory costs.” That “unjustified” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, but we’ll merely note that you can’t minimize or avoid them if you pretend they don’t exist until they formally enter the Federal Register.