House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) raised objections to an abbreviated alternative budget "blueprint" released today -- but were told by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) they needed to back the plan, according to several Republican sources.
The argument, coming a week before the full House and Senate are scheduled to vote on the budget, underscores the minority party's woes in a mounting unified opposition to President Obama's $3.6 trillion FY2010 budget proposal.
Ryan, the ranking Republican on the budget committee, plans to introduce a detailed substitute amendment for the Democrats' spending plan next Wednesday -- and still intends to do so.
But he and Cantor were reportedly told by Boehner and Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) they needed to move more quickly to counter Democrats' charge they were becoming the "Party of No," according to House GOP staffers.
The 19-page document, prepared by Pence's office, was distributed two days after President Obama criticized Republicans for trashing his detail-crammed 142-page budget outline without producing a credible alternative.
“In his egocentric rush to get on camera, Mike Pence threw the rest of the Conference under the bus, specifically Paul Ryan, whose staff has been working night and day for weeks to develop a substantive budget plan," said a GOP aide heavily involved in budget strategy.
"I hope his camera time was gratifying enough to justify erasing the weeks of hard work by dozens of Republicans to put forth serious ideas," the person added.
So, Representative Paul Ryan was busy creating a detailed Republican budget plan to introduce next Wednesday, but then Ryan's plan was thrown under the bus by House Minority Leader John Boehner and Representative Pence for their own zeal in shifting the Republican Party's image from "Party of No," to a party of...."Screw You?"
This is a huge disaster for the Republican Party.
Ryan was drawing up a detailed budget for the Republicans. The GOP could have presented that budget plan as an alternative to the Obama budget, and we could have had a debate on the details of both plans. That is fine and good for the American people because then they could compare the two budget plans, and the priorities between the two political parties. Instead, Boehner and Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence wanted to score some political brownie points against the Obama administration by presenting a cheap PowerPoint presentation as a sad excuse for a Republican budget plan. All because Boehner and Pence are worried about the GOP's image as a "Party of No?" Excuse me, Mr. Boehner, but you have created this GOP "Party of No" after the every House Republican voted against the Obama economic stimulus package. This is a party, where the leadership has been deferred to, not the congressional leaders, or even RNC Chairman Michael Steele, but to conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who has called for President Barack Obama to fail. This is a party where even the RNC chairman Michael Steele had to apologize to Rush Limbaugh, after Steele made some critical remarks against Limbaugh, calling Limbaugh's rhetoric "incendiary" and "ugly." And it is not just Steele that had to apologize to Limbaugh--Republican congressman Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) apologized to Limbaugh after telling Limbaugh to "back off" from his bombastic rhetoric. The GOP has been creating this image as "The Party of No," since the beginning of this year. And John Boehner thinks that giving a press conference in presenting a non-existent Republican budget will change the GOP's image as a "Party of No" into something else? This after Boehner destroyed a good chance of presenting a real alternative budget, next week, that could have slowly shifted the GOP's image away from this "Party of No?"
How much more stupidity can these Republicans sink into?
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