Politics

Boehner: ‘No reason’ for GOP to vote against Senate deal

Alexis Levinson Political Reporter
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Despite receiving few concessions from Democrats, Speaker of the House John Boehner said Wednesday there was “no reason” for Republicans to block a deal forged in the Senate to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government.

“There’s no reason for our members to vote no today,” Boehner said Wednesday, speaking on Cincinnati’s WLW radio.

“The House has fought with everything it has to convince the president of the United States to engage in bipartisan negotiations aimed at addressing our country’s debt and providing fairness for the American people under Obamacare. That fight will continue. But blocking the bipartisan agreement reached today by the members of the Senate will not be a tactic for us,” Boehner said in a statement.

The deal forged by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell raises the debt ceiling through Feb. 7, and funds the federal government until Jan. 15. It sets up a conference committee to hammer out a budget.

A Senate Democratic leadership aide said the Senate will vote on the bill later on Wednesday. Boehner will then bring the bill to the floor, he said on WLW, adding that he expected the government to reopen on Thursday.

Boehner, in his statement, argued that not supporting the deal would be more harmful than supporting it.

“In addition to the risk of default, doing so would open the door for the Democratic majority in Washington to raise taxes again on the American people and undo the spending caps in the 2011 Budget Control Act without replacing them with better spending cuts,” he said. “With our nation’s economy still struggling under years of the president’s policies, raising taxes is not a viable option.”

Republicans have backed away from calls to delay or defund Obamacare over the past week, as the Thursday deadline set by the U.S. Treasury to raise the debt ceiling neared, and that fight merged with the fight to defund Obamacare through the government funding bill. Still, Boehner said, the efforts were not over.

“Our drive to stop the train wreck that is the president’s health care law will continue,” he said. “We will rely on aggressive oversight that highlights the law’s massive flaws and smart, targeted strikes that split the legislative coalition the president has relied upon to force his health care law on the American people.”

“We fought the good fight,”Boehner said on WLW, “we just didn’t win.”

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