Durbin compares Boehner "Plan B" to Thelma and Louise driving off the cliff

WASHINGTON–Such vivid imagery. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) compared House Speaker John Boenher’s “Plan B” backup fiscal cliff plan–which the GOP run House is voting on Thursday evening–to the last scene in the movie Thelma and Louise, where they made their suicidal drive off a cliff.

That famous scene–see it here--has outlaws Geena Davis who plays Thelma and Susan Sarandon who is Louise avoiding capture–but at a high cost.

And with that, here’s Durbin at a press conference in the Capitol on Thursday:

Said Durbing, “Remember the closing scene in “Thelma & Louise”? Rather than face the reality of what lies ahead, they hit the gas.

“That’s what we’re hearing from Speaker Boehner now: Hit the gas and go over the cliff. Because what we have are intense negotiations by Speaker Boehner with — not the president — his own Republicans, night and day, working to bring over the tea party Republicans to a plan that has no chance, the president has promised to veto. As the majority leader has said, it will not come up for a vote in the Senate.

“It’s time for the speaker to wake up to the simple reality that to deal with this national crisis, we have to deal with it on a bipartisan basis. It means that he has to sit down with the president and work out an agreement, not with the tea party Republicans in his caucus. This is a waste of time and tragically unfortunate for this economy, as weak as it is, to be going through these political gyrations a few days before Christmas. This should have been put to bed long ago, but instead what we have from the speaker is a disastrous plan which will hurt working families in Plan B across the country.

“As Chuck Schumer can tell you because he’s worked on this, college credit, it’s one of the casualties in Plan B. So that working families trying to help their kids get through college aren’t going to have that benefit. In addition, the child tax credit, which means so much to low-income working families, is one of the other casualties. And as I understand it, an unrealistic proposal for the estate tax.

“All of these things together tell me that this may be music to the ears — maybe a Christmas carol to the ears of the tea party Republicans, but it’s not good for working families across this country. We really have to say to the speaker, come on, you’ve got to sit down with your people and tell them it’s time to reach an agreement. This idea of passing Plan B is dead on arrival.”