Congressional staffers voted former House Majority Leader Eric
Cantor (R-VA) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) the two best friends
of lobbyists in this Congress.
In Washingtonian's
biennial "best and worst" of Congress survey the magazine sends to
congressional staffers, Cantor and Boehner placed first and second,
respectively, in the "lobbyists' best friend" category.
The magazine sent the survey to staffers "soon after Eric Cantor’s
shocking primary defeat" to Dave Brat. Voters ousted Cantor in a June
primary because of Cantor's ties to crony capitalism and embrace of
amnesty legislation favored by the bipartisan political elite. Cantor
resigned soon after and took a job for a Wall Street firm.
Boehner has always been friendly with the lobbying
community. According to Government Accountability Institute President
and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer's Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets, Boehner is even known for collecting "tollbooth fees" before votes from industry executives.
“You pay money at a tollbooth in order to use a road or bridge,”
Schweizer writes in his book. “The methodology in Washington is similar:
if someone wants a bill passed, charge them money to allow the bill to
move down the legislative highway.”
Boehner and GOP leaders, as do Democrats, also demand secret fees to land top committee spots, as Schweizer's book reported.
via: Breitbart
Speaker of the House John Boehner
initiated a small purge of rebellious Republicans — mostly
conservatives — from prominent committees; it’s the latest instance of
the Ohio Republican’s clamping down on his fractious conference.
The decisions were made by the GOP Steering Committee at a
Monday meeting, which reviewed a spreadsheet listing each GOP lawmaker
and how often he or she had voted with leadership, three sources said.
Reps. David Schweikert of Arizona and Walter Jones of North Carolina were booted from the Financial Services Committee. Reps. Justin Amash of Michigan and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas were removed from the Budget Committee.
According to a source, Schweikert was told that he was ousted in part because his “votes were not in lockstep with leadership.”
Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, said, “The Steering Committee makes decisions based on a range of factors.”
One GOP leadership aide said, “Changes are made for a variety of reasons, most often at the request of committee chairs.”
Rep. Mick Mulvaney
of South Carolina, an outspoken conservative, was placed on the
Financial Services Committee, something that a second leadership aide
noted to demonstrate that voting record was not the only reason behind
the changes.
Read More: Roll Call
The post-election negotiations on U.S. deficit reduction that began
with a surge of optimism sputtered this week with Republicans expressing
political indignation over President Obama’s opening offer to keep a
$500 billion mix of tax hikes and federal spending cuts from kicking in
next month should no deal be reached.
“There has been no substantial progress over the past two weeks,”
House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday at a press conference, adding
to his daily reports that portrayed the closed-door negotiations as
languishing.
A day later, the Ohio congressman and the Republicans' chief
negotiator with the White House simply acknowledged talks had reached a
“stalemate.”
