U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) arrives to speak to the media on the ''fiscal cliff'' on Capitol Hill in Washington, December 21, 2012.

WASHINGTON | Wed Jan 2, 2013 8:08pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Speaker John Boehner abruptly reversed course on Wednesday and set a timetable to approve $60 billion in Superstorm Sandy relief, after fellow Republicans including New Jersey Governor Chris Christie heaped scorn on his cancellation of an earlier vote.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives will now vote on Friday on a $9 billion down payment for storm-related support to the National Flood Insurance Program.

Boehner also assured New York and New Jersey lawmakers that the House will take a second vote on January 15 on the $51 billion remainder of the Sandy disaster aid package approved last week in the U.S. Senate.

"This procedure that was laid out is fully acceptable and fully satisfactory. It provides the full $60 billion that we require," said Representative Peter King, a high-ranking House Republican from Long Island, New York.

Earlier, King had condemned Boehner's adjournment of the House before the Sandy vote, saying on the House floor the inaction was "a knife in the back."

Sandy, the second-costliest storm in U.S. history, devastated the northeastern United States on October 29, smashing New York and New Jersey coastal communities.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, seen as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2016, said the vote's cancellation reflected the "toxic internal politics" of House Republicans.

"There is only one group to blame for the continued suffering of these innocent (storm) victims - the House majority and the speaker, John Boehner," Christie told a news conference in Trenton, New Jersey.

"It is why the American people hate Congress," he added.

Christie tried to telephone Boehner four times after 11:20 p.m, when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told him the vote was canceled. The speaker declined to take his calls, the governor said.

President Barack Obama also made a last-minute overture to Republicans to pass the plan and spoke to both Christie and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo by telephone.

Angry New York and New Jersey lawmakers said the House delay marked a stark contrast to congressional reaction to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Then, a Republican-controlled Congress swiftly approved $62.3 billion in aid just 10 days after the storm devastated the Gulf Coast.

Local officials in battered coastal Long Island communities complained on Wednesday that they could not launch rebuilding projects without knowing aid funds were on the way.

Recreation and senior centers are closed and boardwalks splintered in Long Beach, New York, where $250 million in estimated repair costs far exceed the city's $88 million annual budget.

"We need Congress to pass the bill. That's how we're going to rebuild," said Long Beach spokesman Gordon Tepper.

After reversing course on Wednesday afternoon, Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said in a joint statement: "Getting critical aid to the victims of Hurricane Sandy should be the first priority in the new Congress, and that was reaffirmed today with members of the New York and New Jersey delegations."

NOT A GOOD TIME

Boehner had called off the vote on aid after the House passed a budget deal.

But critics complained Boehner should have allowed the House to give final approval to the Senate-passed Sandy rescue package before the current Congress officially ended on Thursday, causing all pending legislation to expire.

Explaining the adjournment without a vote, a Boehner aide said it "was not a good time" to vote on $60 billion in relief spending as Congress dealt with the broad tax measure, which had few spending cuts.

With Boehner facing an internal House Republican leadership re-election on Thursday after a majority of his party members voted against the "fiscal cliff" deal, some Republican lawmakers said a massive, $60-billion spending bill would have been too much to handle.

"It was a horrendous day with some horrific votes that a lot of our conference was very unhappy with," said Michael Grimm, a Republican from hard-hit Staten Island, New York.

Grimm and other New York and New Jersey Republican congressmen said they were satisfied with Boehner's new plan and would support his bid for another term as House speaker.

Even King said late in the day that his earlier vitriol "seems like a lifetime ago."

SHRINKAGE RISKS

But the new plan could still see some Republicans trying to shrink the aid package, as the $51 billion portion may be split into two parts - one for initial needs and another for longer-term projects. Fewer Republicans are likely to support the longer-term funds, but Democrats gained eight seats in the new Congress in November's elections.

Many House Republicans had complained that the Sandy aid bill was loaded with spending on projects unrelated to storm damage or long-term projects that needed more scrutiny.

Among expenditures criticized in the Senate plan were $150 million to rebuild fisheries, including those in the Gulf Coast and Alaska, and $2 million to repair roof damage at the Smithsonian Institution buildings in Washington that pre-dates the storm.

(Reporting By David Lawder, Ian Simpson, Jeff Mason, Hilary Russ and Tom Ferraro; writing by Ian Simpson; editing by Todd Eastham and Philip Barbara)

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U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) speaks to the media on a ''fiscal cliff'' on Capitol Hill in Washington, December 20, 2012.

WASHINGTON | Fri Dec 21, 2012 7:38am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Now that House Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B" for addressing the "fiscal cliff" has crashed and burned, the top U.S. Republican appears to have two remaining options - wash his hands of the entire matter or negotiate a compromise with Democrats that could abandon scores of his fellow Republicans.

The Republican rank and file and Democrats may face an equally stark choice: work together for a change, or plunge together off the cliff.

Boehner tried to ram a "fallback" plan through the House on Thursday - a relatively tiny tax increase on millionaires and billionaires - and failed. His rambunctious Republicans, who see opposition to all tax hikes as a matter of bedrock principle and of political survival, refused to go along.

President Barack Obama and his Democrats who control the Senate take the opposite view - tax hikes on the wealthy are a condition for their support of a fiscal cliff bill. If there is to be a resolution it will largely depend on an improbable scenario - Democrats in the House teaming up with less militant Republicans to back away from the fiscal cliff.

Compromise has been out of style in recent years, and many think it could require some prodding from the markets.

"At this point, I only see one route to avoiding the cliff, a replay of the TARP debacle in 2008," said George Washington University's Sarah Binder, an expert on Congress. In September 2008, the House defeated the bank bailout bill and the market collapsed, prompting a terrified lawmakers to reconsider and pass it.

"In this case, a harsh market and public reaction would be needed to force the hand of the speaker to negotiate a deal that can pass with Democratic votes," she said.

"If the GOP takes a beating in the headlines and the market tanks, I suspect a good number of rank-and-file GOP will demand that the speaker go back to the table. But absent whiplash from the markets and voters, I suspect it's over the cliff we go."

For the time being - or at least the 11 days until the automatic tax hikes and spending cuts are triggered - the House is in disarray and no deal to avert the fiscal cliff is in sight.

While the House in recess for a Christmas break that is likely to last at least until December 27, Boehner must decide whether to move any further in Obama's direction and agree to tax increases much higher than his own proposal that so angered his fellow Republicans on Thursday.

The Ohio Republican also might have to settle for fewer long-term spending cuts than he had hoped for.

WALK ON BY

Boehner's only other apparent option - one that he hinted at late on Thursday following the collapse of his bill - would be to walk away and leave the problem on Democrats' doorstep.

"Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff," Boehner said in a statement referring to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

But in a closed-door session before that statement, Republican lawmakers said Boehner told them that he would at least try to work out something with Obama.

Either way, Boehner faces the possibility of having to battle not only Democrats for the next two years, but also his own membership on major bills.

"We have people (Republican lawmakers) who felt like they had to stand on the principle ... they couldn't vote for anything (that raised any taxes). I don't quite understand it," lamented Representative Buck McKeon, the powerful chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who oversaw passage of a $633 billion defense spending bill for 2013.

"If you don't have the votes, you can't move forward," McKeon said of the Plan B fiscal cliff bill.

Representative Steven LaTourette, a moderate Republican who is retiring at year's end, told reporters that Thursday's legislative defeat - and public relations failure - will not stop Boehner from being re-elected House Speaker on January 3. "Name one member who opposes him," LaTourette challenged reporters.

Firing Boehner, LaTourette said, would be "like saying the superintendent of the insane asylum should be discharged because he couldn't control the crazy people."

Nonetheless, two years into his stint as Speaker, Boehner still has not found the right formula for corralling his Republican majority, especially the Tea Party conservatives whose victories in 2010 helped Republicans wrest control of the House. However, he has taken steps in recent weeks to punish a handful of uncooperative Republicans.

Since unveiling his plan on Tuesday, several conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation, waged a spirited effort to kill the measure.

Those groups, LaTourette said, had been "making their phone calls, and they're bombing people" with pressure to vote against the bill. That, he added, "makes people nervous" about primary election challengers being recruited in 2014 by outside groups to defeat Republican lawmakers who vote for any tax increase.

"I doubt his speakership is in trouble," said American Enterprise Institute scholar Norm Ornstein, "The big question is whether, and when, he is willing to bring up a bill that will require more Democrats than Republicans to pass."

(Reporting By Richard Cowan. Editing by Fred Barbash)

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1 of 7. U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) arrives to speak to the media on the ''fiscal cliff'' on Capitol Hill in Washington, December 21, 2012. Boehner said on Friday that congressional leaders and President Barack Obama must try to move on from House Republicans' failed tax plan and work together to resolve the looming U.S. ''fiscal cliff.''

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U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) (R) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) speak to the media on the ''fiscal cliff'' on Capitol Hill in Washington, December 21, 2012.

WASHINGTON | Sat Dec 22, 2012 1:04am EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Had there been a vote on Republican House Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B" to avert the so-called U.S. fiscal cliff on Thursday night, it would not have been close. He was probably 40 to 50 votes short of the number he needed to avoid a humiliating defeat at the hands of his own party, according to rough estimates from Republican members of Congress and staff members.

It was not for lack of effort. Boehner and his two top deputies, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy, along with other House Republican leaders, tried for three days to muster support for the measure, which would have cut government spending and raised taxes on millionaires to head off across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts set for January.

They failed for a variety of reasons, according to interviews. But chief among them was this: They were asking anti-tax conservatives to take a big risk for no discernable reward. Plan B, as Boehner named his alternative to President Barack Obama's proposal to raise taxes on earnings of $400,000 a year and above, would never become law because the Democratic-controlled Senate would not pass it. Nor was it likely to put pressure on Obama to reach a deal, as Boehner intended.

Indeed, based on interviews with Republican members of Congress and some of their staffers, the wonder is not that Plan B crashed and burned, but that Boehner apparently thought - and announced in advance - that it would fly.

For Republican members of Congress like John Fleming, it was kind of mystifying.

Fleming, of Louisiana, said he was getting emails from people who raise money for campaigns saying, "'If you support tax increases without significant cuts ... don't even bother to call me.' The conservatives and donor class have laid the gauntlet down. They get that their taxes may go up, but they don't think that there is any reason to make that kind of sacrifice as government spending goes up."

With Senate Democrats and Obama making clear that they would not go along with Boehner's Plan B, said Fleming: "Why would we put ourselves on record" in favor of "raising taxes for a bill that's not going to become law?"

A staff member to a Republican congressman expressed the sentiments of some members more colorfully.

"You don't come out and announce you have the votes when you do not have the votes," she said. "It's like saying 'Here's the flaming bag of poo. We're going to leave it on your doorstep and run.' That doesn't look like you're a leader."

LEADERSHIP LOBBYING

Boehner had talked with members one-on-one in his Capitol office, on the telephone and on the floor of the House.

"He told them, 'This is important ... This will empower our position ... this will put Democrats in a difficult position,'" said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a member of the Republican leadership whose job it was to argue Boehner's case.

"Some of the freshmen members said they had been contacted frequently and had long conversations," said Fleming. "As far as anyone complaining about being threatened or berated, I never heard anything like this," he said.

Fleming, a supporter of the fiscally conservative Tea Party movement, said that McCarthy, the third-ranking Republican in the House, contacted him to find out why he was opposing the leadership.

"He asked me why I was voting (no)," Fleming said. "I gave him my interpretation. He listened very patiently. He came back with a couple of responses. At the end he had to admit some of my points were good points, that this bill would not do some of the things that needed to be done."

But, Cole said, dozens of members convinced themselves that Boehner's bill amounted to a tax hike despite evidence to the contrary.

"Some people really really really really talked themselves into believing it was a tax increase even though Grover Norquist, of all people, said it wasn't," said Cole, referring to the anti-tax activist responsible for "the pledge" not to raise taxes that most Republicans sign.

"That is like me talking myself into believing something is a sin even though the Pope tells me it is not," Cole said.

Representative Patrick Tiberi, a 12-year veteran of the House who serves on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, said the opposition was not just from conservatives. "It was a very mixed bag of people," he said.

"Some members determined that it was politically easier to vote on this in January when people realize that their taxes have gone up, rather than now. For others, it wasn't the right policy."

"I think we're going to go over the cliff," Tiberi said, adding, "I don't see something getting done."

CONFIDENCE IN PUBLIC

Boehner and Cantor publicly voiced confidence on Thursday that they could gather enough votes to pass the bill. "I never saw a football coach who went into a game saying 'We are going to lose,'" Cole said.

But behind the scenes the leadership team was uncertain.

The staffer sensed the bill was doomed before it was actually pulled from the floor Thursday night from a sudden slowdown in her email traffic. "It went dead silent."

With the start of the vote set for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Boehner made the decision at about 7 p.m. after it was clear that they would fall 40 to 50 votes short of the needed 217 for passage.

If the gap had only been four or five votes, Boehner and his team would have kept pushing, pressing, making their case.

"The natural thing would have been to rally around the leader," Cole said. "But there was too much difference between where we were at - and what we needed."

Boehner decided to make the announcement at a closed-door meeting of House Republicans in a room in the basement of the Capitol.

Before he did, he led his troops in a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and then the Serenity Prayer, which includes the passage:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

"It was a very emotional meeting," Cole said.

With Cantor at his side Boehner delivered a short statement.

"He said something that I thought was profound," Fleming said. "Basically, he said the collective wisdom of two people locked in a room can never be as high or as great as the collective wisdom of 535 individuals," the combined membership of the House and Senate.

Then, Fleming said, Boehner declared: "'We don't have votes,'" and "we are adjourning and would return right after Christmas or right after New Year's, depending on the circumstances."

"There were gasps. People were stunned," Cole said, adding that many members had expected instead a final pep talk before a vote on the bill.

"I think he was just resolved to the fact that it wasn't going to go anyplace. He was not angry at all. I thought he was very magnanimous about it," Fleming said.

Cole sent a message to Boehner on Friday.

"I basically said, 'It was a tough day yesterday. I just want you to know that I will be with you in the tough days ahead. You still have my full support and confidence.'"

A day after a Republican revolt killed his tax plan, Boehner was asked if he was worried about losing his job as speaker.

"No, I am not," Boehner told reporters. "If you do the right things every day for the right reasons, the right things will happen," he said.

"While we may have not been able to get the votes last night to avert 99.81 percent of the tax increases, I don't think - they were taking that out on me," Boehner said.

"They were dealing with the perception that somebody might accuse them of raising taxes."

(Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai and Patrick Temple-West; Editing by Fred Barbash and Eric Beech)

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1 of 4. House Speaker John Boehner makes a brief statement to the media at the Capitol in Washington December 19, 2012.

WASHINGTON | Thu Dec 20, 2012 10:28pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican lawmakers delivered a stinging rebuke to their leader, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, on Thursday when they failed to back an effort designed to extract concessions from President Barack Obama in year-end "fiscal cliff" talks.

The dramatic twist threw into disarray attempts to head off $600 billion worth of indiscriminate tax hikes and spending cuts that could push the U.S. economy into recession next year.

It also cast doubt over Boehner's future as speaker after failing to control unruly conservatives in his caucus.

With only 11 days left for bickering politicians to prevent automatic tax hikes and spending cuts, U.S. stock futures fell sharply on the news of the rebuke to Boehner.

The Ohio congressman had hoped to demonstrate Republican unity by passing a bill through the House, known as "Plan B," that would limit income-tax increases to the wealthiest sliver of the population - those earning $1 million and more, a far smaller slice of taxpayers than Obama wants to pay higher taxes.

But Boehner canceled the vote after failing to round up enough support from his party because many conservative Republicans are opposed to tax hikes on even the richest wage-earning Americans.

"The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass," Boehner said in a statement after huddling with other Republican leaders.

The White House pledged to work with Congress to reach a deal as quickly as possible.

"We are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly that protects the middle class and our economy," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement.

The bill, had it passed, would have put Republicans on record as supporting a tax increase on those who earn more than $1 million per year, breaking with decades of orthodoxy. It won the blessing of influential anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, but other conservative groups fiercely opposed it and many rank-and-file members said they would not support it.

Obama wants to raise taxes on families earning more than $400,000, a much lower threshold.

RECESSION THREAT

Obama and Boehner aim to reach a deal before the New Year, when taxes will automatically rise for nearly all Americans and the government will have to scale back spending on domestic and military programs. Economists say the combined $600 billion hit to the economy could push the U.S. economy into recession.

Boehner said Obama now must first pass a bill through the Democratic-controlled Senate before he holds another vote in the House.

Democrats said Boehner should first hammer out a deal with Obama. "The only way to avoid the cliff altogether is for Speaker Boehner to return to negotiations," said Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid.

With Republicans in chaos, Boehner will almost certainly need support from House Democrats to pass a deal before the end of the year. But he will have to keep an eye on his right flank before he stands for re-election as the top House lawmaker on January 3.

Alternatively, Boehner could wait until the new year to hold a vote. At that point, tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 will have expired for all Americans, and it presumably would be easier to pass a bill that would restore tax cuts for most.

Opinion polls show that more Americans would blame Republicans rather than Obama if they don't reach a deal before then.

So far, negotiations appear to be following the dysfunctional pattern set by the 2011 battle over the debt ceiling: fitful progress alternating with public posturing. Boehner also struggled during that showdown to corral the most conservative members of his own party.

Washington narrowly avoided defaulting on the U.S. government's debt in August 2011, but the down-to-the-wire nature of the effort prompted a first-ever debt rating downgrade and spooked investors and consumers.

This time around, concern over the fiscal cliff has weighed on markets but analysts say that investors appear to be assuming that the two sides will avert disaster.

"The markets are likely to interpret this as signaling even tougher negotiations in coming days," Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of bond giant PIMCO, told Reuters.

S&P 500 stock futures fell 1.6 percent while Dow Jones stock futures and Nasdaq futures both lost 1.5 percent. At one point S&P 500 e-mini futures were down as much as 3.6 percent.

Lawmakers had hoped to wrap up work before the year-end Christmas break, but leaders in both the House and the Senate have indicated that they may call members back to work next week.

"The brinkmanship will continue," said a senior Republican aide. "This isn't the end of the story. More drama to come."

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro, Mark Felsenthal, Richard Cowan, Jennifer Ablan, Dominic Lau and Kim Dixon; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Philip Barbara)

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