Boehner’s Hands-Off Style Backfires on Bill
The collapsing highway bill is a case study in the perils of John Boehner’s bottom-up leadership style.
The speaker of the House prefers to come up with broad outlines of a legislative plan, delegate to committee chairmen to fill in the details, tap the GOP whip to sell it to the rank and file and give lawmakers in both parties chances to make changes on the floor.
But with the highway bill that all fell apart. The fumble on a transportation bill illustrates how Boehner courts chaos with this hands-off approach, and it raises questions about the fate of the central piece of legislation for 2012.
Boehner’s allies insist that after weeks of straining, cajoling and rewriting, the House will pass a version of the highway measure sometime next month. But it won’t have been pretty, it won’t have been painless, and it will give more ammunition to those in Washington’s power corridors who believe the tail is wagging the dog on the House side of the Capitol.