Boehner scrambling to find Democrat votes for Cromnibus

By streiff | 3:00 PM on December 04, 2014

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The Continuing Resolution/Omnibus appropriation bill, aka cromnibus, wending its way through the House is in trouble. Dissatisfaction with the bill and the underlying strategy to deal with Obama’s executive overreach is wide and deep in the GOP caucus and it seems like Boehner will have to violate the Hastert Rule in order to force the bill through the House. Via The Hill

Speaker [mc_name name=’Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’B000589′ ] said Thursday he expects some House Democrats will join Republicans in passing a trillion-dollar spending package next week to avert a government shutdown.

But the Ohio Republican stopped short of saying majority Republicans needed Democratic support to get the measure through the lower chamber and over to the Senate.

…

Boehner’s troubles in moving the bill grew on Thursday, when Heritage Action, an influential conservative policy group, urged Republicans to oppose the GOP package.

“The fight is now, not next year,” said Mike Needham, Heritage Action’s chief executive officer. “Americans expect real action, not a show vote.”

Hoyer said he’s spoken to [mc_name name=’Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’M001165′ ] (R-Calif.), the majority whip, about the cromnibus bill. But he declined to say whether the Republicans are asking the Democrats for votes.

“McCarthy and I have talked,” Hoyer said. “I don’t want to say he’s reached out to me for votes, but we’ve talked about it.”

Asked if he thinks Republicans would need Democratic votes to pass the bill, Hoyer said simply, “I don’t know.”

Pelosi, for her part, said she’s spoken to Boehner in search of a bipartisan agreement. But she declined to lend details about what package would satisfy the Democrats.

“I have reached out to the Speaker and said … we want to work together to pass a bill to keep government open,” Pelosi said.

“As we had to supply the votes last year to open up government, let us supply the votes to keep government open,” she added. “But we can’t do it unless we have a bill that is worthy of our support.”

To a great extent one of the best outcomes, other than [mc_name name=’Rep. John Boehner (R-OH)’ chamber=’house’ mcid=’B000589′ ] using his newly acquired Obamacare coverage to have some of Erick’s gifts surgically attached, would be for the Democrats to pull the rug out from under Boehner, leaving him holding a bill that has the support of neither the GOP nor the Democrats.