“As Ryan very clearly articulated, we're the minority in Washington, [so] how do you impact real change when you only have the House and you don't have the Senate or presidency? It's pretty hard,” the source conceded.They pretty much blew all that to shreds with their latest nonsense about withholding Congress' pay if they don't pass a budget - raising questions about whether or not that is Constitutional.
With Ryan’s conservative cache, leaders laid out a somber situation to manage expectations. That entailed telling rank-and-file Republicans no to “promise something you can't deliver on,” the source said.
But here's the really amusing part. In their statements about all this, Republicans have focused on the need for the Senate to pass a budget. But under their proposal, the House will have to pass one too. Trouble is...they can't agree on one.
But what has emerged from the House GOP retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia is that Republicans did not have an entitlement-cutting proposal to present to Obama in debt-ceiling talks, had the president ever agreed to negotiate with them. The talk about big entitlement cuts, at least in connection with a debt-ceiling agreement, was mostly talk...So the Republicans are demanding government spending cuts that can only be accomplished by trashing entitlements. But they don't have a f*cking clue about how to do that, wouldn't be able to agree on a plan if they tried, and would get killed in public opinion for the effort. How do you even think about pulling "something you can deliver on" out of that mess?
As for the actions on entitlements that might have been part of GOP demands for a debt-ceiling deal, says one participant in the Williamsburg meeting: “Long term, those have to be figured out. But my sense of that is that it is not going to happen in ten days. This is complex, important.”
Let me give you a clue Mr. Speaker...you can't. Pragmatic fail.