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After previously giving dire warnings about the sequester in a recent op-ed he penned for The Wall Street Journal, House Speaker John Boehner did an about face and told Meet the Press' David Gregory that he wasn't sure if it was going to hurt the economy or not and he told Gregory “I don't think anyone quite understands how it gets resolved." If he really wants to get the country out of this self-inflicted mess, there's a pretty simple way, which is to pass the bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers this week, entitled the Cancel the Sequester Act of 2013.

While they're at it, they could pass the Progressive Caucus' budget rather than insisting on more austerity measures. Instead we're being treated to this Kabuki theatre: Boehner: 'I don't think anyone quite understands' how sequester gets resolved:

In an exclusive interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, House Speaker John Boehner said there is no easy way to stop the budget cuts -- known as the “sequester” – that began taking effect Friday night, and voiced uncertainty over how Washington can solve the overall fiscal problems that have consumed the nation’s politics for more than two years.

In an exclusive interview on Meet the Press, House Speaker John Boehner weighs in the economic impact of the sequester and whether or not it will hurt the country's economy.

“I don't think anyone quite understands how it gets resolved,” Boehner admitted in his interview with NBC’s David Gregory. [...]

But Boehner said, “I don't know whether it's going to hurt the economy or not. I don't think anyone quite understands how the sequester is really going to work.”

The speaker said the House would pass a spending plan this week to fund the government through the end of the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, and that in his conversation with Obama at the White House Friday, the president had agreed “that we should not have any talk of a government shutdown. So I'm hopeful that the House and Senate will be able to work through this.”

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From TPM: Boehner Calls Off Plan B Vote:

In a stunning defeat, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) called off a vote Thursday night on his Plan B to avert the fiscal cliff, citing a lack of support from his own party. Boehner issued the following statement as an emergency meeting of the House Republican Conference was ending:

The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass. Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff. The House has already passed legislation to stop all of the January 1 tax rate increases and replace the sequester with responsible spending cuts that will begin to address our nation's crippling debt. The Senate must now act.

This might not be good news for John Boehner, but as John already noted here, he's looking like Santa Claus for progressives.

And here's Eric Cantor's "walk of shame" leaving the House after "Plan B" went down in flames.

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[Scarce edit: A little musical soundtrack seemed in order. Music by Screen Team, a parody of Awolnation's "Sail".]

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From this Wednesday's The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell took apart "tea party" Rep. John Fleming for his remarks about irresponsible Republicans in the House never voting to increase taxes in the last 100 years -- and reminded everyone why they would be better off not quoting President Lincoln on taxes if they're not in the mood to make fools of themselves.

It seems Fleming repeated during a press conference, the same thing he wrote in an op-ed this week: FLEMING: GOP-controlled House has never raised taxes:

If some Republicans have their way, the party soon will make history for all the wrong reasons.

In the past 100 years, since the authority of Congress to tax income was enumerated in the 16th Amendment, marginal income tax rates have never been raised when Republicans have held the majority in the House of Representatives. For nearly a century, Republican-controlled Houses held the line on tax rates, a Republican coup de pointe to Democratic tax-increase parries. Here’s the question for my fellow Republicans: Do we want to be the first-ever GOP House majority to raise federal marginal income tax rates? [...]

If Republicans really believe in the principles of smaller government and economic liberty — as we have over the past 100 years, and as many of us still do — we should be far more concerned about getting principle right instead of worrying about polls and re-election.

Abraham Lincoln reminded us to “adhere to your purpose, and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.”

Here's more on O'Donnell's response from his site: O’Donnell on why Republicans shouldn’t quote Lincoln on taxes:

He failed to mention what the Republican-controlled House of Representatives during Lincoln’s presidency did with taxes. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell set the record straight on Wednesday’s show:

“That Republican-controlled House actually passed our first income tax which Lincoln signed into law to pay for the Civil War. It was a progressive income tax–3% on annual incomes over $600 and 5% on annual incomes over $10,000. The Supreme Court ruled those taxes constitutional, but decades later in 1895 the Supreme Court reversed the earlier decision and declared federal income taxes unconstitutional–which is why in 1913 it took a Constitutional amendment to re-establish federal income taxation.

O’Donnell also pointed out that Republicans constantly bring up Lincoln any chance they can get “because 21st century Republicans know that Abraham Lincoln is the only Republican that many Americans admire.”

“Abraham Lincoln is also the only Republican president, indeed the only president, who has ever gotten a Republican House of Representatives to raise income taxes. Republicans didn’t just establish the very first income tax as I just described. Two years later, they raised the rates. They doubled the top tax rate from 5% to 10%. That’s back when Republicans were responsible: 150 years ago.”

O'Donnell also reminded his audience that their stance on taxation may be one of the reasons that Americans have not given them control of the House of Representatives for all that many years over the last century.

Sadly, they wouldn't have it now were it not for cheating and gerrymandering.

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Looks like Rep. Tom Cole is still out there taking the hit for Speaker John Boehner and giving him some cover from the "tea party" wingnuts in the House that think compromise of any sort is akin to treason: Key Republican Says Middle Class Tax Cuts Would Pass The House:

Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) said Sunday that middle income tax cuts would pass the House if brought up.

Asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” if he sees growing Republican support for the bill that GOP leaders oppose, he said, “Yeah, honestly I think if it got to the floor, it would carry.”

“I think it would,” said Cole, a deputy majority whip. “Look, that’s my judgment, but I spend a lot of time counting votes and looking around. But this doesn’t say we’re going to raise taxes on anybody, it says OK this group for sure, your taxes aren’t going up. Get that done with, get it over with.”

The remarks seem to undermine Speaker John Boehner’s hand in fiscal cliff negotiations with President Obama. The Speaker’s call for Obama to make concessions in the talks is built on the premise that the president’s plan for avoiding the cliff cannot pass both chambers of Congress.

I don't think he's doing any of this without Boehner's full approval. They want those social safety nets slashed and are backed into a corner on the tax increases and in a bad negotiating position right now. And as Think Progress noted:

Despite their rhetorical support, however, Republican members have yet to sign the discharge petition filed by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that would force the House to vote on the middle-income tax cut extension.

So talk is cheap. They're going to give an inch when they're forced to or when they start hearing from enough of their donors and/or constituents that have finally had a belly full of them.

Transcript below the fold.

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Rather than admitting that Republican's policies just aren't that attractive to most women, and that maybe they should take a look at those policies if they ever intend to change that dynamic, Rep. Marsha Blackburn twisted herself in knots and came up with some pretty ridiculous excuses for the lack of women in GOP leadership roles.

After being asked about the backlash to House Speaker John Boehner putting 19 white men in charge of their committees before finally appointing Rep. Candice Miller to lead the House Administration Committee, Blackburn did her best to try to put a positive spin on the situation.

JANSING: Well, there is a perception out there that there's not an opportunity for them to move ahead. When I talk to women who try to recruit other women to fun for Congress, to run for higher positions, one of their concerns is that they won't really have a significant place at the table.

BLACKBURN: Well, I think that that's always a concern. But you know, one of the things that I have found is that, number one, you don’t have to be entitled in order to lead, and that is something that we see happening. Women jump in and take the leadership role and they get in there and it’s kind of the lead from behind and move to the front. They take the responsibility. They perform beyond expectations and by doing that they have the ability to change the debate.

My goodness, look at what has happened in the tea party movement. Every time I go to a tea party rally, I'm amazed. The crowd is primarily female. The organizers are female, and I think that that bodes well for participation, grass roots participation and policy making participation.

When asked about the fact that women organizers or participants at the grass roots doesn't change the fact that their numbers in leadership positions on the Congress are still sorely lacking when compared to their Democratic counterparts, Blackburn responded by saying that Democrats have more women in their ranks and who have served for longer lengths of time. She also came up with this doozy.

BLACKBURN: They have women that have had more of a career in the political process. Those of us who are conservatives, we kind of have a circuitous route in our lives. Politics is not something that is a lifelong job for us. We have careers in the private sector. Look at the women that are in the House. You know we've been marketers and nurses and we've been teachers and we're education specialists. And we bring all of that expertise to bear in the public sector.

Yeah, they have careers, unlike those Democratic women who are all just lifelong politicians. And what is it with Blackburn suddenly loving the idea of "leading from behind?" I thought that was what that Socialist, Marxist, Kenyan usurper, evil, Democratic President did.

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It seems John Boehner actually caved to the criticisms about House Republicans not appointing a single woman to chair any of their committees and gave one of them a consolation prize: Dems, Progressives Snicker As House GOP Finally Appoints Female Committee Chair :

After days of pressure from Republicans and Democrats alike, House Republican leaders finally put a woman in charge of a committee Friday afternoon. But if Speaker John Boehner and the rest of the House leadership thought choosing Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI) to lead the House administration committee — making her the sole female committee chair in the House — would put the issue to bed, they appear to have been mistaken.

Democrats and advocates for women in politics say Miller’s appointment feels like “tokenism” — and say the gender makeup of the House’s committee chairs will follow the GOP to 2014.

“I’m not sure which was worse: House Republicans refusing to have any women Chair a Legislative Committee or only appointing a woman to Chair the Congressional Housekeeping Committee,” said one Democratic official.

The Committee on House Administration oversees the running of the House as well as federal elections. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA), the current chair, lost his bid for reelection on Nov. 6. That meant the House GOP leaders had to fill his slot at the top of the committee.

Normally who chairs the administration committee in the House would only be news inside the Beltway. But by choosing Miller to take over, House Republican leaders appeared to critics to be trying to clean up the mess they made when the so-called “major” House committee chairs were announced this week. That list was all male, leading to criticism from women in the Republican caucus as well as Democrats. Female House Republicans publicly pushed Boehner to appoint a women to the remaining committee chair slots.

For a party trying hard to grow its appeal among women, the committee chair announcement was seen as an indication the GOP is not ready to change by critics on the left. Miller’s appointment has done nothing to quiet that view. Read on...

It's so nice to see them being in touch with how to react to those criticisms of waging a "war on women." I don't think they're doing themselves any favors by putting her in charge of a committee that she never served on until being named as chair either. It just reeks of desperation and obvious pandering a day too late for anyone to actually believe they care about diversity among their ranks.

I guess it wouldn't hurt if they decided to change their policies so that women in America actually wanted to vote for them and maybe run for office as well, but from their rhetoric and lack of introspection about their recent election losses, I don't expect that to change any time soon.

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As Karoli explained this week, Republicans going after the funding for things like PBS, and "Planned Parenthood, NOAA, EPA, NPR, medical research, the UN intergovernmental panel on climate change, the OAS, and of course, Obamacare" is nothing new, but that didn't stop Romney adviser Ed Gillespie from pretending that Romney wasn't putting a target on Big Bird and PBS during the first presidential debate.

Gillespie admits that the amount of money is a pittance when it comes to what's actually adding to our deficit, but hey, we've got to start somewhere. Everyone knows they hate PBS for ideological reasons and that they aren't serious about deficit reduction unless it's an excuse to destroy every social safety that exists, or as in this case, to destroy an institution they hate because they disagree with their philosophy.

I'm not sure what else you'd call gutting the funding to PBS other than "targeting" when there's no other logical reason for going after them and when you can simultaneously repeat over and over again that raising taxes on the rich is a waste of time because you won't collect enough revenue to put a meaningful dent the deficit. If this was supposed to be some kind of a "joke" then maybe Romney needs to tell that to his friends in the House, because they're taking actual votes to cut the funding and not just talking about it.

And Gillespie's remarks about Big Bird being "commercially successful" are pretty callous when the people who rely on that type of programming are the ones who can't afford to be making donations to PBS, and may very well not be able to afford cable.

Transcript below the fold.

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From the party that was willing to take the country hostage during their debt ceiling brinksmanship, that has responded to the election of our first black president with a record amount of obstruction, and from a man who wasn't even willing to allow the word "compromise" to be used when talking about negotiating with Democrats, now House Speaker John Boehner wants us to believe he's willing to negotiate in good faith on those tax cuts that are going to expire next year.

Which of course means give us all of our tax cuts for the rich or nothing. Lawrence O'Donnell's been advocating for just allowing them to expire and force them to go over the fiscal cliff so the Republicans can actually negotiate in good faith since they'll no longer be beholden to Grover Norquist's no new taxes pledge and they'll get something passed withing the first few weeks of the year. Watching the Republicans in action and given what they've been like to deal with over the last few years, I'd say he's right.

The Republicans have become Lucy with the football when it comes to trying to negotiate with them on anything and Boehner can't even control his own caucus. I think there's a good chance Boehner will end up going down in history as the worst Speaker of the House of the most unpopular Congress, ever, and for good reason.

Transcript via Fox below the fold.

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Ed Schultz spoke to Rep. Keith Ellison about this House members, primarily freshmen, who met for something they called 'Conversations with Conservatives" and how they responded when asked the question "Are any of you excited to have Romney as the nominee?"

Dave Weigel has more on the meeting -- Mitthusiasm: House Conservative Edition:

"Well, first, we're excited about the opportunity to defeat Barack Obama, more than anything," said Rep. Jim Jordan, the shirtsleeved chairman of the Republican Study Committee. [...]

Rep. Louie Gohmert, the aggressively quotable former judge from Texas, basically conceced the point. "If you're not sure about whether to support Mitt Romney," he joked, "whether you're liberal, or whether you're very conservative, you ought to be excited, because he's been on your side at one time or another."

You could tell, in the room, that Gohmert had just created a "narrative" against Romney. Why, that was unfair. Rep. David Schweikert of Arizona reported on a meet-up with conservatives in his district last week: "They were literally handing out Romney bumper stickers in the room."

Gohmert returned to clean up his splatter. "So I'm not completely misunderstood," he said, "I'm not as excited as I am desperate."

So our Congress is playing pre-pubescent stupid reindeer games now. Here is today's House session. It opens with the prayer and the pledge, and as Steny Hoyer comes to the House floor to introduce a unanimous consent resolution to approve the Senate bill extending unemployment insurance and the payroll tax holiday for two months until a longer-term bill can be negotiated.

This follows the revelation that the so-called heated caucus meeting with Boehner ahead of yesterday's debacle in the House was really just a man-moment where they shared their favorite Braveheart moments.

Steve Benen:

If you watch the clip, you’ll notice that Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), who was presiding over the House session at the time, got out of the Speaker’s chair and left the chamber altogether. Other Republicans joined him. Hoyer, of course, noticed, and explained, “You’re walking out, you’re walking away, just as so many Republicans have walked away from middle class taxpayers, the unemployed, and … those who will be seeking medical assistance from their doctors.”

When Hoyer finished speaking and turned to Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) to continue the debate, GOP leaders demanded that C-SPAN turn off the cameras so the public couldn’t hear the debate any more.

Classy.

I know Republicans think they’re in “Braveheart” but I don’t remember the scene in the movie in which William Wallace decided he’d rather run away than fight.

This made me want to go donate to the Blue America candidates. You?