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House Republicans Circulate Plan to Oust Boehner from Speakership

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Several conservative House Republican members are contemplating a plan to unseat Speaker John Boehner from his position on January 3, Breitbart News has exclusively learned. Staffers have compiled a detailed action plan that, if executed, could make this a reality.

The Republicans, both conservatives and more establishment members alike, are emboldened after the failure of Boehner’s fiscal cliff “Plan B” on Thursday evening. Dissatisfaction with Boehner is growing in the House Republican conference, but until now there hasn’t been a clear path forward.

Those members and staffers requested anonymity from Breitbart News at this time to prevent retaliation from Boehner similar to what happened to those four members who were purged from their powerful committee assignments a few weeks ago. Their expressed concern is that if Boehner knew who they were, his adverse reaction toward them would be much more brutal than losing committee assignments, such as a primary challenge in 2014 by a leadership-sponsored candidate.

The circulated plan is a comprehensive multi-step process.

According to the plan as drafted, the first step is to re-establish the election of the Speaker of the House by secret ballot, rather than by a public roll call vote. That’s because the members who would oppose Boehner, if there ended up not being enough votes to achieve their desired result or if Boehner scared via threat or coaxed via prize some of the opposition into voting for him, would be sitting ducks for retaliation in the near future.

Read more from this story HERE.

Boehner Abruptly Scraps Fiscal Cliff ‘Plan B’ Vote After GOP Defections

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Facing a rank-and-file GOP revolt, House Speaker John Boehner abruptly canceled a vote Thursday night on a plan to raise taxes for the wealthy, bringing the country closer to a plunge down the “fiscal cliff.”

The House then recessed until after Christmas. The development raises questions about whether Boehner could muster support among Tea Partyers in the GOP-controlled House for a broader deal to avert the automatic tax hikes and spending cuts on Jan.1.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the sudden development showed that Boehner must now work with Democrats to try to avoid the cliff.

“Speaker Boehner’s partisan approach wasted an entire week and pushed middle-class families closer to the edge,” Reid said. “The only way to avoid the cliff altogether is for Speaker Boehner to return to negotiations, and work with President Obama and the Senate to forge a bipartisan deal.”

According to a GOP source familiar with the vote coun, “the veto threat and opposition from the White House and the Senate Majority Leader made some members feel like they were taking a risky vote for no reason, even though the bill did not actually include a tax hike. Now, the President and Senate Majority Leader must find a solution to this crisis.”

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Conservatives Denounce Voting for Boehner’s Plan B

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Prominent conservative leaders, including former attorney general Edwin Meese III, Ken Blackwell of the Conservative Action Project, Brent Bozell of ForAmerica, Colin Hanna of Let Freedom Ring, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, David Bossie of Citizens United, Gary Bauer of American Values, Jim Backlin of the Christian Coalition of America, Richard Viguerie of ConservativeHQ.com, Al Regnery of the Paul Revere Project, and Andy Roth of the Club for Growth, among a myriad of others, scheduled a press conference this afternoon to denounce Speaker John Boehner’s “Plan B” tax increase for addressing the fiscal cliff. Some are accusing Grover Norquist of giving cover to the establishment to facilitate this cave-in and hand President Barack Obama a liberal victory.

The group released a statement this afternoon:
“As leaders of broad based American citizen groups we call upon Republican House Members to vote no on Speaker Boehner’s Tax Hike known as “Plan B.” This tax increase bill is just like the tax increase proposal Nancy Pelosi offered last year on May 23rd.

Speaker Boehner, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and too many Members of the Republican conference have forgotten that the problem in Washington is too much spending and not too little taxation.

When the American people voted to return the Republican majority in the House last month we sent you to cut spending. Instead, you are now voting on the Pelosi plan to increase taxes next year.

We urge Members of the House to vote no on the procedural rule to stop the Pelosi/Boehner tax plan from coming to the House floor for a vote.”

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Boehner’s House Has Increased Debt $18,944 Per Household

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(CNSNews.com) – Under the leadership of House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio), the 112th House of Representatives has thus far approved legislation that has increased the debt of the federal government by $2,176,949,774,695.46—or approximately $18,944 for per American household.

The 112th House of Representatives has achieved this in a little more than 20 months time—and it may not be done yet enacting laws to approve new federal borrowing and spending.

The 112th House came into power on Jan. 5, 2011, electing Rep. John Boehner as its speaker on that day.

The Boehner-led House did not have a direct impact on the fiscal policy of the federal government until March 4, 2011, when a continuing resolution enacted on Dec. 21, 2010 in the lame-duck session of the previous Congress expired.

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White House Rejects Boehner’s Offer to Boost Millionaires’ Tax Rate in Exchange for Spending Cuts

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President Barack Obama quickly spurned House Speaker John Boehner’s latest compromise offer, as the federal government continues its scheduled progress towards the $600 billion so-called fiscal cliff in January.

The rejection came Sunday, two days after Boehner had offered to raise tax rates for Americans earning more than $1 million dollars per year.

News of Boehner’s compromise will likely spur protest by the GOP’s small-government wing.

On Friday, Boehner also proposed to raise the government’s debt limit by roughly $1 trillion over its current level of $16.3 trillion. That’s also controversial, because Republican advocates of smaller government want to use Congress’ control over the debt-limit to curb the federal government’s 10-year $45 trillion spending plan.

Read more from this story HERE.

Score One for Obama: Boehner Caves on Tax Hikes

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WASHINGTON – House Speaker John Boehner has proposed raising tax rates on people making more than $1 million, a source familiar with the talks told Fox News, in a development that could signal at least some movement toward a deal with President Obama.

According to the source, the latest offer is not being rejected, but there are still issues remaining and there is a serious effort to work out the difference.

At issue are expiring Bush-era tax cuts that would automatically vanish on Jan. 1 for virtually every income tax payer if Congress and the president don’t act. Steep budget cuts are also scheduled to kick in, unless Congress and Obama agree to forestall them with other deficit reduction measures.

Some have warned the economy’s nascent recovery would be reversed by the fiscal cliff. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said this week that the economy has already been affected by the uncertainty, and also warned that the Fed would not be able to offset the impact of the fiscal cliff.

Until now, Boehner had maintained his opposition to raising any rates. Instead, he had proposed to raise up to $800 billion in tax revenue over 10 years by limiting tax loopholes and deductions as part of a broad tax overhaul.

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Boehner Is Giving Away The Farm

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photo credit: gage skidmore

House Speaker John Boehner has already conceded the biggest tax increase in history – $800 billion – in negotiations with Barack Obama and Democrats.

But now he is reportedly offering much more than that if the administration will agree to much deeper cuts to entitlement programs.

There are several problems with this that illustrate, again, why it is totally unacceptable for Boehner to remain in the position as the most powerful Republican in Washington.

No. 1: The definition of “cuts” in Washington: Most Americans think of budget cuts as actual money not spent. That is the not the definition Washington uses. Each and every year, spending for entitlements and many other budget line items increases automatically and substantially. When government programs don’t grow as much as they would normally grow, that is considered a “cut” in Washington. Under that definition, even when the budget is growing, in Washingtonese, the politicians say they are “cutting” spending.

No. 2: The only cuts that are really meaningful are those proposed and enacted in the current session of Congress. Most of the “cuts” talked about in these negotiations are phantom cuts Congress will try to impose on future Congresses – something they don’t have the authority and enforcement power to do. That means to have any real impact, the cuts have to be made between January 2013 and January 2015. You have to front load them. Believe me, Obama and the Democrats will never do that.

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Republicans Have Failed the Nation

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photo credit: donkey hotey

Over the next couple of years, Barack Obama wants to raise the national debt to $18.9 trillion or so.

John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and the congressional Republicans want to raise the national debt to $18.4 trillion or so.

The present leadership of the Republican Party has gone from making the case that government is the problem and the American people are the solution to making the case that Democratic controlled government is the problem and Republican controlled government is the solution.

By giving up on making the case that government is the problem and pivoting to “Democrats are the problem,” the Republican Party has failed the American people. Historically, when parties lost, their leadership went and hid for an appropriate amount of time under a rock after an acceptance of blame and a resignation.

The present Republican leaders in Washington, instead of hiding under a rock, have taken to standing on the rock and demanding conservatives self flagellate. Neither John Boehner nor Mitch McConnell are visionaries. They are survivors. They survive by recognizing the biggest threat to them and trying to befriend it or neutralize it.

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Boehner Must Go

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photo credit: donkeyhotey

It’s not possible for Republicans to dump Barack Obama in the next four years. They have blown their opportunity to do that. But the next best thing they can do right now is to dump John Boehner as speaker of the House.

Though Boehner has been portrayed in the media as some kind of hardliner who is intransigent and unwilling to compromise, the truth is that he is the opposite. He is an appeaser. He is an enabler. He is an accommodationist.

Boehner began waving the white flag of surrender to Obama soon after Republicans made him speaker in 2011. Since all spending bills need to originate in the House and because the Republican majority in the House has had absolute power to freeze spending, Boehner was dealt a powerful hand to keep Obama in check. Instead, he folded. Not only did he fold repeatedly, he even signaled before negotiations about spending ever began that he intended to fold.

He has repeatedly dismissed the idea that freezing the debt limit was a political option. That’s like unilaterally disarming before one’s enemies.

But it gets worse.

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Boehner Blasted Over GOP Purge

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Given everything on his plate, you wouldn’t expect John Boehner to face an uproar over the likes of Justin Amash and Tim Huelskamp . . .

But many on the right are furious with the House speaker for purging them and two other conservative Republicans from key committee assignments. That may be inside baseball, but these folks are keeping score.

Boehner was retaliating—there’s no other word for it—against the lawmakers for repeatedly voting against the GOP leadership. He served notice at a closed-door meeting that rank-and-file votes are being “watched” by his team, according to The Hill . . .

Erick Erickson, the influential RedState blogger and CNN commentator, sounds supremely frustrated: “Conservatives are either going to hang together or separately. Right now they are getting played because Boehner, McConnell, and the like are sure the conservative movement has become a paper tiger. And, to be honest, conservatives have shown them this is true.”

What conservatives need to do, he says, is pump money and field challengers against establishment candidates: “Either start blowing stuff up or shut up.”

Read full story HERE.