House Speaker Boehner wants nothing to do with responsibility or accountability for negotiating a deal to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. Obviously he has no control over his caucus. In situations like this one can lead one’s party’s members to accept that they have a duty to fashion a compromise with the Denmocrats and the President, or one can do what Boehner just did – Punt.

House of Representatives leaders talked Wednesday and said they’d wait for the Senate to act on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff. House leaders said that once the Senate acts, they will consider whether to take up that measure.

The House , which has a Republican majority, in August passed a bill to extend all the Bush-era tax cuts, which expire at the end of the year, for one year. It has also approved legislation last week that’s an alternative to the $109 billion in automatic spending cuts due to take effect Jan. 2.

The Democratic-run Senate this summer passed a measure to extend only tax cuts for individuals earning less than $200,000 and families making less than $250,000.

Read more here: http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/washington/2012/12/house-gop-leaders-say-senate-has-to-make-next-move-to-avoid-cliff.html#storylink=cpy

Shorter Boehner: I like being Speaker of the House, I just don’t like the hard work and the political fallout that comes with it.

In effect, Boehener is saying he won’t can’t consider a compromise because his members won’t let him. His mealy-mouthed press release is a weak attempt to pass the buck onto the Senate (i.e., Senate Democrats), and claim they and the President are solely responsible for the lack of progress in negotiations because they failed to consider the House’s DOA bill for extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. He knows as well as anyone that the his “secret negotiations” with the President failed because no one in his caucus would “follow his lead” despite the President placing Social Security cuts on the table (either an incredibly naive action or a very cynical one by Obama – take your pick).

It appears, thanks to House Republicans, that the lame duck Congress will “do nothing” and in January, Boehner may very well be out of a job. Probably for the best. I’m tired of his sprayed on tan and his crocodile tears. His replacement will likely take an even harder line in negotiations to appease the crazies among the Republicans House members (and those who fear being primaried by crazy teahadists in 2014). The only question is how will a larger Dem caucus in the House, and an enlarged Dem majority in the Senate, respond to the GOP’s ongoing game of Russian Roulette. I already fear we know how the White House will play this out, and I’m not sanguine of any deal getting done that protects seniors, the poor and the rapidly shrinking middle class.