I was right -- well, close enough, but not quite

Boehner on Tea Party: "no daylight".

And lights out for the rest of us. (Actually, with regard to most Tea Party people and their Congressional representatives, the lights appear on but obviously nobody's home.)

Government shutdown will delay millions of tax refunds


Steve Cohen: Time for the President to demonstrate the courage of his convictions


I was right! (wrote this last night): A little theory of mine


Reid not optimistic about avoiding government shutdown

"Mr. Reid said that Republicans have “drawn a line in the sand” on issues of abortion funding and changes to the clean air act, and he said those issues could not be resolved in the hours left before a government shutdown."

Reid less optimistic shutdown can be averted

"The Senate Democratic leader said negotiators have basically agreed to the total level of cuts for the rest of fiscal 2011 but strong disagreement remains over controversial policy riders. These include proposals to defund Planned Parenthood and various Environmental Protection Agency initiatives."

“The numbers are basically there,” Reid said. “But I’m not nearly as optimistic — and that’s an understatement — as I was 11 hours ago. The numbers are extremely close. Our differences are no longer over how much savings we get on government spending.

“The only thing holding up an agreement is an ideology,” Reid told the Senate’s presiding chair. “I’m sorry to say, Mr. President, my friend the Speaker and the Republican leadership have drawn a line in the sand, not dealing with a deficit we know we have to deal with.

“The two main issues holding this matter up are the choice of women, reproductive rights, and clean air,” Reid said. “These matters have no place in a budget bill.”

Now, here's the Speaker of the House, confirming what he's denying:

Boehner, appearing on ABC's "Good Morning America," repeated that he was working to provide the "largest number of spending cuts possible."

"When it comes to an out of control bureaucracy in Washington, we know that that's also getting in the way of creating jobs in America. The EPA's out of control. And the American people do not want taxpayer dollars used to fund elective abortions," he said.

How many American people, John? And how do you quantify the EPA "being out of control"?

Now, watching the news today, the blame-setting game is in full swing. But the Democrats are winning decisively, because Reid is being plain and honest in what he's saying is happening, while Boehner has to talk mumbledy-mouth about "all the cuts still being on the table". The game they're playing is that NPR, Planned Parenthood, and EPA regulations are all "funding" issues. As Ben Cardin so clearly put it, determining that is not following regular rules of order. The Republicans have a crisis to use, and their trying to use it to get as much of their social issue agenda accomplished. A-HOLES.

Late night Thursday update:

I found the following article on the Huffington Post:

Government shutdown threatened by Republicans over Planned Parenthood

First, though, here's what I wrote yesterday:

But anyway, to my theory. I think the Boner Boehner is constantly changing the final negotiated "figure" for budget cuts to keep the media attention on that number, and less on the policy riders that haven't been removed from the negotiations.

Now, here's some quotes from the HuffPost piece:

A. "The White House and Senate Democrats have publicly capitulated to ever-increasing Republican demands for spending cuts, but negotiations over the budget for the remainder of the fiscal year have shifted their focus from money to so-called riders -- provisions that restrict the federal government from spending money on certain projects or entities."

B. "At a late-night White House meeting between the president and key congressional leaders, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) made clear that his conference would not approve funding for the government if any money were allowed to flow to Planned Parenthood through legislation known as Title X. "This comes down to women's health issues related to Title X," a person in the meeting told HuffPost."

C. (Compare this to what I wrote) "Schumer said earlier Thursday that Democrats were ready to meet Boehner's number, but that Boehner was using money as a distraction so that the public wouldn't realize his members were fighting over cultural issues.

"The only reason the numbers aren't solved is because Speaker Boehner knows that if he did that, then everyone would know that it's the riders, and he doesn't want that out. But if you look at how many hours in the rooms of negotiators that discussing riders, it's predominant," he said. "The Speaker's folks have admitted that we've been fair on the numbers."

D. Now, here's the surprise, and what I didn't get quite right. The Tea Party precipitated this shutdown by insisting on the budget cuts. But the shutdown is coming on because a few senior members are pushing the riders:

"Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the number-two Democrat in the upper chamber, said that Boehner was under pressure on social issues not from the Tea Party, but from senior Republicans. "It's not about reducing the deficit. It's about hitting programs. He's gotta cut programs. And we think still we can reach agreement on the money. But he is under enormous pressure and he says it's not from the Tea Party, it's from the old guard, the Republican guard, that wants to once and for all show that they can force through some of these social issues, like abortion," Durbin told reporters Thursday evening in the Capitol. "The rider list gets longer and longer and non-negotiable."

A GOP aide confirmed Durbin's claim that it's the senior members who are insisting on riders. Polls show that the public is likely to blame the Tea Party for any shutdown, but ironically, most new members are more passionate about spending than social issues. [OK, I did this:] Yet the public is likely to conflate the Tea Party with the culture wars if the government ultimately shuts down due to a dispute over funding for family planning. [And isn't that overall a bad thing for the GOP? If they were just about budget cutting - never mind that trying to do too much in one year of discretionary spending is stupid - we could at least sympathize with their goals. But hiding the social policy agenda behind the budget cut smokescreen -- that just smacks of old fashioned smoke-filled backroom politics. And it's screwing the entire nation in the process.]

"It's mostly a few older members who have seen an opportunity," said the GOP aide."

So if Boehner was really a leader, and not a puppet, he'd tell the elderly statesman to suck it on the riders and fight that battle another day. There will be plenty of battles to fight.