December 10, 2012 06:12 PM UTC

You're Gonna Need Us, Says DeGette To Boehner

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• by: Colorado Pols

Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn reported this weekend:

Interviews with more than a dozen House and Senate lawmakers, many of whom are primed to start whipping votes, underscored the reality that the lame-duck session could still end in tax hikes and across-the-board spending cuts.

“I wouldn’t want to put a percentage on it, but it certainly could happen,” said Rep. Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican who next month will be sworn in as a senator.

“It’s absolutely possible. We’ve seen it happen before,” added Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette, a chief deputy whip for House Democrats.

For Boehner to be successful, DeGette said the speaker needs to remember during his negotiations with Obama that a sizeable number of Republicans are expected to jump ship on any tax agreement with the White House – whether it’s a short-term deal or something much bigger.

“The Republican leadership is going to have to realize they have to work with us,” she told POLITICO.

The delicacy of this situation for Speaker John Boehner really can’t be overstated. Given the likelihood that many conservative Republican House members will balk at any deal that violates their no-new-revenue ideological principles, Boehner will have to turn to Democrats to win House passage of any reasonable budget compromise. The problem with that, of course, is that Boehner could endanger his speakership if he arranges the passage of legislation that would be palatable to Democrats. Who he would in this scenario need to pass anything.

And remember, if nothing passes, Republicans take the blame for the resulting automatic budget cuts and tax hikes on everybody. Also, they say Democrats create a “culture of dependency?” Wait until Doug Lamborn realizes those cuts to military spending are an actual possibility.

We can’t tell you exactly how Boehner intends to thread this needle, but he has more to lose.