Catch of the Day

I'm somewhat ambivalent about fact-checking as a journalism genre...I'm sometimes concerned that there's a inherent bias in favor of discussing those things that are most easily shown to literally untrue, regardless of how substantively important they might be.

However, the WaPo's Glenn Kessler has a real doozy today: Speaker Boehner's claim that there are 219 pending regulations which will each cost the economy at least $100M. It turns out this is wrong in one relatively minor way -- the number of qualifying regulations is nowhere close to accurate -- but that's not the big deal. The real problem here is that while the government is required to identify all regulations that could have a $100M effect, it turns out that effect could be in either direction. In other words, they include those regulations that the government estimates will help the economy by at least $100M, in addition to those that are projected to hurt it. Indeed, if I understand this correctly, the procedure is to identify all effects of over $100M (in either direction), not all regulations that have a large net effect -- so as Kessler says, many of these may have net effects that are small or positive.

My general feeling is that if a politician says he has a list of 219 of something it's not going to surprise anyone if it turns out that there's only 150 (or that there are 500). But it's sort of a big deal if it turns out that a significant chunk of the 219 are examples of exactly the opposite of the point that the pol was trying to make. And this isn't just an incidental point; it's the big evidence Boehner has in support of the biggest initiative that his House Republicans are busy with this fall.

Now that Kessler has done such a good job of debunking it, you can be sure that Republicans will drop this in favor of more accurate figures and examples. Right?

Great catch.

Recess Appointment Update from Boehner: We're Not in Session

Yeah, there's a huge flap going on this afternoon about when Barack Obama's speech to Congress is going to be next week...it's a perfect slow-news-cycle story that everyone will forget about soon. But Plain Blog (courtesy of reader JC) has the best angle on it: the Speaker practically admitted that Obama can make recess appointments right now!

Boehner (my emphasis):

As you know, the House of Representatives and the Senate are each required to adopt a Concurrent Resolution to allow for a Joint Session of Congress to receive the President. And as the Majority Leader announced more than a month ago, the House will not be in session until Wednesday, September 7, with votes at 6:30 that evening.

So: Boehner is saying that Congress, pro forma sessions in order to supposedly block recess appointments notwithstanding, is not "in session" enough to, say, pass a non-controversial resolution! Doesn't that tell us that the Senate is in fact in recess? Doesn't it mean that the current month-long period does in fact fulfill the Constitutional requirement that "The President shall have the Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate"?

I mean, if you can't believe John Boehner about when Congress is or is not in session, who can you trust?

All of a Sudden (It's Too Late)

Here's one wild guess about what's happened over on the House floor, where John Boehner had to postpone a vote at the last minute, presumably after he didn't have the votes.

My guess? He never got close. This late update from The Hill had not only the 25 no votes that put the bill below sea level, but a whopping 33 undeciding/not saying (along with 6 more probable yes votes). That's after a day of heavy lifting.

Now, it could be that Boehner has been a handful of votes away, and it's just a question of a couple of dozen Members fighting it out over who has to bit the bullet and take one for the cause. That's a tricky coordination problem, and it's even possible (as I write this, the vote is postponed but still possible later this evening) that it's just taking a bit more time than expected.

But another possibility is that he's been far from getting there all day, and tried to stampede it as the only remaining tactic. Perhaps if he gave the impression that it was going to happen, he could stampede GOP-oriented media who might not want to be on the wrong side of practically every Republican in the House, and that in turn would put pressure on wavering Members to sign on. A longshot, but if Boehner knew yesterday that he was likely to lose, maybe it was a longshot worth stabbing at.

I have no idea which of these were true, and as usual I'll toss in a caution that I'm not a reporter, but my hunch is that he didn't come close. The clue? That big group of undecideds, all of whom were needed to vote yes. If Boehner was really close, you would think that he would have had some of those 33 jump on the bandwagon a lot more loudly over the course of the day. It's only a clue; it's possible that they all told him they would be with him if necessary...but at least some of them should have been convinced that they weren't in the very last group of Members whose votes might not be needed. But it is a clue.

So that's my guess. I suppose we'll see, later tonight and on into tomorrow. Meanwhile, my casting of Boehner as Mal yesterday isn't looking so good -- but my take on the House GOP as the geek Trio is looking better all the time. Which is not, to be sure, something that I'm very happy about.