To many, that meant that in addition to overseeing the passage of a continuing resolution that would avoid a government shutdown, Boehner might try to pass a highway bill, reauthorize the Export-Import Bank and maybe even raise the debt ceiling.
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Boehner recently announced he would be stepping down from his speakership after a stand-off with House conservatives calling for a government shutdown over Planned Parenthood’s federal funding. “I want us to be much closer to the people we represent, and I want them to once again feel like this is their government, they are in charge, and we are here to serve them”.
Hard-line House Republicans, tea party groups, and several conservative interest groups viewed Boehner, R-Ohio, as an impediment to their agenda, and soft when it came to dealing with congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a presidential candidate, has called on McConnell to resign.
This month, 57 House Republicans signed a letter to McConnell urging him to employ the so-called nuclear option to eliminate Democratic filibusters and switch to majority votes when considering the Iran nuclear deal and other important legislation.
Where McConnell differs from Boehner, though, is that there is another level of strength, spine, and fight to which he can escalate things, if he and 51 of his members so choose.
Last week, Boehner announced his resignation effective at the end of October, leaving the next speaker to face the possibility of a shutdown. Salmon said he texted a fellow conservative, Sen.
Salmon is not alone. When asked Friday about ousting McConnell, Cruz replied: “That’s a question for leader McConnell and for the Republican conference”.
The Texas lawmaker assailed his GOP leadership, saying it “reflexively surrenders at the outset”, while complimenting Democrats for their willingness to “crawl on broken glass with a knife between their teeth” to fight for their policies.
But despite all the anger with his leadership, McConnell is safe for a number of reasons. “There’s a high level of frustration out there with what a lot of people perceive to be lack of accomplishment”, but he said voters “ought to be directing their fire at President Obama”.
One year after Boehner leaves, every single seat in the US House of Representatives will be up for election.
The proposal would permit Republicans to deliver to Obama a measure to take away about $350 million in taxpayer funding Planned Parenthood now receives through the Medicaid program to provide health services to low-income women.
Any new leaders should live up to the promises made when Republicans retook the House in 2010 – that we would fight for limited, constitutional government, that we would return to regular order, allow for an open amendment process, empower our committees and committee chairmen, release legislation at least three days prior to it being voted on, end the culture of punishment for those who differ with leadership and vote the will of our constituents, and stop the practice of manufacturing crises and governing from one to the next. After that, Boehner started taking a tighter hand with the rest of his leadership team – making sure they were working in concert with his goals for the whole caucus, not their own ideological loyalties.
“We can expect President Obama and numerous congressional Democrats to cry loudly that if Congress uses its authority, Congress will be quote ‘shutting down the government.’ That, of course, is nonsense”, Cruz said in August, according to The Washington Post. He said Cruz is “kind of a man on an isolated island”.
“The jockeying is early enough in the process that I don’t see a long term effect”, said Sen.
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“You do that by having a bottom-up approach where decisions actually percolate up through members across the ideological spectrum to gain consensus”, Meadows said. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. Boehner knows that many of his members oppose the bipartisan package, but he’s moving forward anyway, relying on Democratic votes to prevent a shutdown. In August 2014, after losing a primary election that guaranteed he would not be a member of the next Congress, then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) resigned his leadership position and, shortly afterward, retired from Congress.
