Day: July 30, 2011

Pelosi on House Floor: Boehner ‘Chose to Go to the Dark Side,’ Is Leading US to Default

Jon Ponder

Give ’em hell, Madame Speaker:

“Let me repeat. And I repeat, he chose to go to the dark side by putting forth a bill that he himself told his Members [it] would sink in the Senate—and I add, lead to default, lead to default.”
– Speaker Nancy Pelosi

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accused Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) of choosing “the dark side” in making his debt ceiling bill more amenable to House conservatives in securing passage.

Pelosi also argued the Speaker had set the U.S. on a path towards default during her floor speech in favor of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s debt ceiling plan on Saturday.

“The Speaker chose, when he didn’t have the votes, instead of to reach out in a bipartisan way to see how we could work together, he chose to go to the dark side,” Pelosi said to disapproval from Republicans in the chamber.

“Let me repeat. And I repeat, he chose to go to the dark side by putting forth a bill that he himself told his Members [it] would sink in the Senate—and I add, lead to default, lead to default. We cannot default. We are the greatest country that ever existed in the history of the world.”

GOP ‘Shredding the American Political Process’

Jon Ponder

[Boehner’s debt-reduction bill] needed to be bipartisan, but was written in secret to be as partisan as possible. The proposal needed to be sensible, but would instead force us to go through all of this again in six months and would mandate approval of a constitutional amendment in both chambers before House Republicans would allow the United States to pay its bills. Think about that for a moment. Elected GOP lawmakers have come to believe extortion is a legitimate tool to get Congress to pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. When I talk about Republicans shredding the American political process, this is what I’m talking about.

– Steve Benen at Washington Monthly