John Boehner Not Feeling Too Great About The House

by Stuart Shapiro

Speaker Boehner today weighed in on the prospects for maintaining GOP control of the House.

Boehner put the odds at 2-to-1 that the GOP will hold onto control.

“I would say that there is a 2-in-3 chance that we win control of the House again but there’s a 1-in-3 chance that we could lose and I’m being myself, frank. We’ve got a big challenge and we’ve got work to do,” he said.

Think about that.  The Republicans have a 52 vote majority, meaning the Democrats would need to win 26 seats (plus two of the three vacant seats) to retake control.  Boehner thinks that there is a 1 in 3 chance that will happen.  I’m a crazy optimist and I put the Democratic chances at 20% or so.  Maybe Boehner wants the Democrats to take over so he doesn’t have to deal with his crazy caucus anymore.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.