The New Republic

I would say it's a bad thing, all in all. The Tea Party crowd was going to be severely pissed off anyway. If Boehner's bill fails and he has to come to Nancy Pelosi with hat in hand, we should be able to get the Reid bill more or less as-is; no more concessions (of which we have had far too many already). Furthermore, for all the efforts of the media to spin the whole business as "opinions on shape of earth differ," it will be hard to get around the fact that when it came down to crunch time, House Republicans failed to produce a bill to raise the debt ceiling, while Senate Democrats succeeded. If Boehner is able to produce a competing bill and show he can get it through the House, he'll have some leverage to squeeze even more out of the Democrats in exchange for the long-term debt ceiling increase. And the media narrative will be muddied as usual.

- Dausuul

July 28, 2011 at 12:25am

1. Good. It means Boehner isn't as impotent as his (and the Tea-Party's) recent verbiage indicates. 2. Bad. The justification for the Tea-Party passing the bill is that Pelosi, Obama, and Reid all hate it. This is a terrible basis for making decisions, and no vindication of Boehner's power. What if Obama says he "likes" it tomorrow? 3. Bad. The Boehner bill guarantees we'll continue this pointless crisis yet another 6 months. It will poison the coming spending bill debates. It will poison the economy through December. His bill tries to give responsibility for controlling spending to yet another panel of 12 politicians, instead of keeping it in Congress. And the NEXT 11th hour crisis will happen in the dead of winter. All very bad options.

- AllanL5

July 28, 2011 at 11:08am

I'm afraid that in regard to what we can expect, the House and an outhouse have something in common.

- Nusholtz

July 28, 2011 at 11:25am

It strikes me that the pros outweigh the cons to a significant degree, especially if the Tea Party crowd becomes an ostracized segment of the GOP and are left to play by themselves in the corner while the adults get back to the job of governing this country responsibly.

- GSpinks

July 28, 2011 at 12:58pm

"It will demonstrate a level of sanity not previously assumed from that body that bodes well for reaching a final agreement." "Sanity" in what sense? The House Republicans' vote is "sane" only in the sense that it is sane for a kidnapper to refrain from murdering his hostage and to keep applying pressure until it has become certain that no ransom will be paid. I cannot see how this vote in any way increases the likelihood of a final agreement, at least no agreement other than the Boehner plan itself. You TNR staff writers seem unified in the opinion that the Boehner plan has no chance either in the Senate or to dodge Obama's veto. I hope you're right in this, though I'm not quite so sanguine. Obama has given us every signal that he cannot imagine a third alternative to a congressionally-approved raise in the debt ceiling and default, and given how horrible the default alternative would be, he may yet rationalize signing any piece of crap Crongress sends him. And your down-sides to the success of Boehner's plan in the House are all on-the-money. Obama has committed a major error in letting Boehner get his contraption off the ground. The president should have ended this game a week ago when the Republicans looked like the unreasonable lunatic fringe. They never should have been allowed to make a counteroffer. Now the Democrats either have to endorse Boehner's monstrosity or else go into a default crisis looking like the unreasonable people who wouldn't come to the table to avert disaster. And even if Obama finds the backbone to raise the debt ceiling without congressional approval, he'll be doing it from a weaker moral position than he would have been had he acted last week.

- AaronW

July 28, 2011 at 9:45pm