Reply #7: They don't have to get the teabaggers on board

[jmowreader]

My preference would be for the entire Democratic caucus, plus every Republican that isn't in the Tea Party Caucus, to vote Yea on this. This will give Boehner the ammunition he needs to ignore the Tea Party for the rest of this Congress. The bill is not nearly as bad as it could have been--it didn't eliminate Social Security or Medicare immediately like the teabaggers want, it didn't include a cuts-only balanced budget amendment the teabaggers want, and the spending cuts are about half what the teabaggers want. Okay, it's a bad bill--it doesn't have any tax increases or defense cuts, both of which it needs, and the savings in it are probably optimistic by at least a factor of two. It is, however, enough to keep 100 percent of teabaggers from voting for it. (This may have been Boehner's intention all along.)