Boehner: Dems Would Win A Shutdown

Politico reports:

Speaker John Boehner is warning his Republican colleagues that Democrats would “win” a government shutdown and the GOP would suffer a political catastrophe if the federal government runs out of money at the end of this week.

“The Democrats think they benefit from a government shutdown. I agree, ” Boehner said during a closed-door, 90-minute meeting on House Republicans on Monday night, according to several lawmakers who attended the session.

Boehner’s opinion was quickly backed up GOP lawmakers who were serving in Congress during 1995, when former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) squared off with then-President Bill Clinton by shutting down the government twice. Reps. Don Young (Alaska), Dana Rohrabacher (Calif.) and Buck McKeon (Calif.) — a close ally — supported Boehner’s position. Dozens of other Republicans rallied to support Boehner as well, in a moment that one GOP insider called a “turning point” for House Republicans.

“My view is that a government shutdown doesn’t benefit anyone necessarily, but if one party or the other is going to get an edge, it’s probably the Democrats. I agree with the speaker there,” Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio) told POLITICO. “If you look at the government shutdown of 1995, it guaranteed President Clinton’s reelection. And that’s what this would do. If you want to cede the presidential race in 2012, you shut down the government.”

But while Boehner may have backing from the old veterans in his camp, he’s run headlong into the tea-party group of House Republicans who believe that Obama and Senate Democrats would come off the worse if a shutdown actually takes place.

These hard-line Republicans, not all of whom are freshmen, have forced Boehner to play hardball with the Democrats or face a potential threat to his own survival as speaker. This hard-core faction is insisting on no less than the $61 billion spending cut package passed by the House in February, and they’ve refused to back to any proposal that includes smaller reductions. Reid and Senate Democrats have pushed a much smaller reduction of $33 billion. As of Tuesday afternoon, the potential of a shutdown was growing, but could be headed off by a Boehner offer of $40 billion in cuts plus certain policy riders favored by GOP lawmakers.

The split among Republicans breaks somewhat along generational lines, but even more clearly between those who have served in government — either in the state, local or federal level — and those who have never done so.

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