Blogs For Victory

From ABC:

In a meeting with a small group of reporters in his Capitol Hill office this morning, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, criticized President Obama and White House officials for their lack of resolve in negotiations.

“Dealing with them the last couple months has been like dealing with Jell-o,” Boehner said. “Some days it’s firmer than others. Sometimes it’s like they’ve left it out over night.”

Boehner explained that talks broke down over the weekend because, he said, the president backed off entitlement reforms so much from Friday to Saturday, “It was Jell-o; it was damn near liquid.”

Rather hard to negotiate with someone who’s position continually shifts.  We’ve seen this before – again and again Obama has refused to put his own ideas firmly on the table…meanwhile, however, the business of the country does need to be done, so men and women with more firmness come up with actual proposals, only to see them sink in the morass of Obama indecision.

I doubt there is much left in Obama outside a desire to be re-elected.  He seems to have resigned any semblance of leadership in domestic or foreign policy and is only interested in events in so far as he feels he can use them for personal, political advantage.

It is probably time for us to give up on Obama and negotiations:  pass a bill which raises the debt limit while cutting $1.50 for each additional dollar of new debt and just hand it off to the Senate.  Let them vote it up or down, or amend it and send it back to the House.  We can sit back and wait – we’ll have passed our plan and can reasonably state to the American people that we’re just waiting to see what Reid and Obama come up with in response.

At any rate, there is something wrong – and vaguely un-American – in seeing our Congressional leaders closeted with the President to work out a plan which, presumptively, would be passed through Congress with minimal debate and no real chance to amend…a sort of decree from on high which Congress is supposed to rubber stamp.  Better to just do it properly and let the political chips fall where they may – in the end, if we stand firm on principal while showing our willingness to do the job, we’ll reap the benefit, in my view.