House Speaker John Boehner had a chance to become Speaker of the entire House of Representatives instead of just trying to hold together his fractured caucus of Republicans.

Instead of trying to find 217 votes within the Republicans in the House…which meant passing a bill no Democrat could ever support….Boehner could have taken another path.

Here is that path…there appears to be a majority in both houses of Congress for a package of spending custs and debt reduction which include closing some tax loopholes.

Instead of sticking a Constitutional amendment on the House bill, Boehner could have reached out to Democrats, dropped the Constitutional amendment, added more budget cuts and put in a tax loophole elimination provision.

Yes Boehner would have lost maybe 80 of his Tea Party hobbits.

But he could have gained 90 Democrats in return and passed a bill that would have been impossible for the Senate to reject.

Boehner would have been Speaker and leader of the entire House of Representatives.

Sure he would have been viciously attacked by the hobbits in his own party, and maybe even lose the Speaker’s chair as a result.

But he would have saved America and gone down in history as a real leader for the entire country instead of a partisan hack. He would have become the poster child for courage instead of a desparate politician trying to find 217 votes in his own party.

Our neighbors the Tohono O’odham have a story about Baboquivari…the sacred mountain on the eastern edge of their lands.

Baboquivari is not only a mountain, it is a symbloic place where the tides of history can be changed by those who stand at the boundary between the past and the future…and act for the benefit of all the people. You don’t have to stand on the mountain itself to encounter a “Baboquivari moment”.

Most folks never want to stand at the point of Baboquivari where they can change the direction of history because there are awesome energies loose….not a few people have been driven off Baboquivari mountain by lightning on clear sky days.

But fate sometimes propels people to a Baboquivari moment where what they do at that moment can have profound positive or negative impacts of the whole world.

They can put their self interest ahead of doing the right thing for everyone.

Or they can see the higher purpose and need and act, even though that act may not be in their immediate self-interest.

Boehner had his Baboquivari moment the other day…and he might have saved his power inside the House Republican caucus, but he did nothing to help America transcend the debt limit fight and move forward.

Harry Reid over at the Senate will also stand at Baboquivari, as will Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Obama in the next few days.

Someone needs to put their partisan pandering aside and do the right thing for America.

As the clock ticks down on the deadline to deal with raising the federal debt limit, some good quotes come to mind:

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they’ve tried everything else.” Winston Churchill

“If you’re already in a hole, quit digging.”  Cowyboy Way

“That sooner or later…somewhere…somehow…we must settle with the world and make payment for what we have taken”  Lone Ranger

“If you waste time or money today, you will regret it tomorrow. Practice thrift in all ways.”  Hopalong Cassidy

“Don’t corner something that would normally run from you.” Cowboy Way

“If you looking for a helping hand, start by looking at the end of your own arm.” Patrick Dorinson the Cowboy Libertarian

“The Government keeps trying to make us better people. They’re wasting their time and our money.” Old cowboy

Boehner is supposed to announce his new plan at 4PM EDT which is 1PM our time.

See also:

Enough of the games in DC…solve the darned debt limit problem!

How not to save a boat from sinking

Debt ceiling battle…the national soap opera

Who needs soap opera when we have the gigantic fight going on in Washington over whether or not to raise the national debt ceiling.

Republicans will only agree to raise the debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion if an equal amount of budget cuts are agreed to.

Democrats have proposed budget cuts of something like $1.5 trillion, but want revenue increases to make up the difference.

Republicans say no tax increases.

Democrats suggest getting rid of a lot of the loopholes in the tax code such as the deduction for corporate jets.

Republicans think eliminating loopholes for their corporate buddies is a tax increase because Grover Norquist says so.

Democrats even put reducing future Social Security benefits on the table…providing the Republican would agree to get rid of the tax loopholes.

Liberal Democrats immediately went ballistic that “their” president would be willing to throw old people under the bus.

Conservative Republicans started a fight within the GOP over how close to the edge would they be willing to push the country to get the maximum budget cuts with no “tax increases”.

House Majority leader Eric Cantor pushed so hard at a meeting at the White House that President Obama abruptly got up and left the meeting.

The deadline to approval an increase in the debt ceiling is August 2nd.

Tea party favorite Michelle Bachmann thinks the crisis about failing to increase the debt limit is overstated and seems to want to drive the country off the cliff just to see what happens.

Senate Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell offered a deal to extend the debt limit and then dump the decisions about what spending to cut squarely in Obama’s lap so he’d get the blame for whomever’s ox was gored.

House Speaker John Boehner seems to have been eclipsed by Cantor’s hard line position against Obama. Then again, Boehner, and old Washington hand, may be just giving Cantor enough rope, a tree and a horse to hang himself with.

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi is off somewhere whining about staying true to Democratic Party principles, whatever those are.

Moody’s issues a dire warning about downgrading US Treasury debt ratings.

China begins to think holding US debt is sort of like how we see owning a Chinese-made toy.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans are watching all of this wondering things like….

….if the Republicans succeed in not increasing the debt limit will I get my government check after August 3rd?

…why should we get hit with reductions in our pet government programs if big business keeps getting tax breaks that we don’t get?

…but if we give the feds more money in tax revenues is that not like giving a junkie more crack?

…and since a lot of people had their credit wrecked in the financial collapse, job losses, reduction in home equity values and all the other fallout from Wall Street’s orgy of greed why should we care about the national credit rating?

My guess is most people don’t adhere to a strictly “Republican” or “Democrat” view of the problem or the menu of solutions.

We’ve got to cut spending, no question.

But lets not make the decision on whose ideology wins the fight….lets cut everything.

We’ve got to fix the tax code and stop giving away potential tax revenues because some special interests were successful in getting tax code loopholes they obviously do not want to give up.

If we’re going to feel some pain…everyone should.

Why should I give up my mortgage interest deduction so some corporate fat cat can write off his jet?

Maybe getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction for mortgage amounts over $1 million could work if the corporate fat cats could only get airplane deductions for propeller driven aircraft.

Who makes propeller driven airplanes? Do we?

But, as the show goes on in Washington, it seems like everyone is playing for air time on the network news and cable talk shows.

Meanwhile, millions of us have got to get dressed and go to work or look for work. Tonight we will see act 42 in the DC “showdown at the debt ceiling corral”.

A friend described the process of negotiating the debt limit increase as “you put a Republican and a Democrat in a sinking boat and they argue about whose fault it was the boat is sinking and then realize neither of them know how to swim.”

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How not to save a boat from sinking

Just when you thought some Republicans might have an ounce of common sense, House Minority Leader John Boehner retreated from his offer of compromise to allow the Bush tax cuts to stay in place for families earning less than $250,000 a year, but expire for families earning more than $250,000 a year.

The GOP has decided to go to the mat with Democrats over protecting the tax cuts for the 2% of taxpayers who earn 25% of the nation’s income.

This news from the Los Angeles Times:

Republicans decline to compromise on tax cuts

House Minority Leader John Boehner retreats from a suggested deal on the extension of Bush-era tax breaks. It stands to become the marquee issue of the midterm election.

Reporting from Washington — Republican leaders in Congress on Monday backed away from a possible compromise with the Obama administration over expiring George W. Bush-era tax cuts, committing both sides to an election-year battle with significant stakes for the economy.

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