Boehner's bad week

By: Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan
Politico.com
March 8, 2012 08:56 PM EST

Speaker John Boehner’s got quite the losing streak going.

Just in the past two weeks, nearly 100 Republicans said they’d vote against two different versions of Boehner’s signature highway bill — one that covers five years and another that was merely 18 months.

On Thursday, Boehner was forced to admit that the “current plan” is to bring up the Senate bill or “something like it.” Meaning he will be hard up to find enough members to support his vision for more road building coupled with expanded oil drilling.

And that loss is just this week alone.

House Republicans have twice handed President Barack Obama victory by passing his payroll tax holiday, which the GOP alternated between opposing and supporting. The second time the House took up the bill, Boehner and other Republican leaders caved to Democratic demands and didn’t pay for it, undermining their months-long argument that Democrats were hurting the Social Security program.

(More here.)