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Ending a 24-hour roller coaster ride, the House narrowly approved a Republican-backed debt ceiling bill Friday after Speaker John Boehner won back wavering conservatives by adding a provision threatening default next year if Congress doesn’t first approve a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
In closing remarks, from the well of the chamber, the weary Ohio Republican was alternately defensive and defiant. “I have worked with the president and the administration from the beginning of this year to avoid being in this spot. I have offered ideas. I have negotiated,” Boehner said emotionally. “I stuck my neck out a mile to try to get an agreement with the president of the United States. I put revenues on the table in order to come to an agreement to avert us being where we are.”
Left unsaid was how much the forces in his own party had pulled him back—especially on the revenue issue.
