Boehner spokesman defends false claim that Democrats don't have a plan to replace the sequester

On Sunday, John Boehner said: "There's no plan from Senate Democrats or the White House to replace the sequester." As a factual matter, that's false'both the White House and Senate Democrats have a plan to replace the sequester. In fact, their plan got 51 votes in the Senate last week, but thanks to the filibuster, Senate Republicans were able to block it.

It's true that Republicans don't like the Democratic plan, but that's not what Boehner said. He said that Democrats simply don't have a plan, an assertion that was obviously bogus. But that isn't stopping his spokesman from defending it:

With both of those "plans" easily found in official records and news reports, we asked Boehner's spokesman Brendan Buck how the speaker could claim that none exists.

"A plan must demonstrate it has the ability to pass a chamber of Congress to be worth anything. We've twice passed a plan. We're still waiting for the Senate to pass something, anything," Buck told PolitiFact in an email.

That's completely absurd. If Boehner wanted to say Senate Democrats haven't passed a plan, he could have said that, but he didn't. And if he had, it would have been fair to point out that the reason they haven't passed a plan is that Republicans are filibustering their plan. But that's not what Boehner said. He said neither the White House nor Senate Democrats had a plan, period'and that's just not true.

It's also worth pointing out that it's equally absurd for Boehnerland to claim that they've twice passed a sequester replacement. Those votes came during the previous Congress and they narrowly passed. It's unlikely they would pass again during this Congress, but even if it were likely, the fact that they passed during the previous Congress is nothing more than the answer to a trivia question. From a legislative perspective, what Republicans passed last year is no more relevant than what Democrats passed three years ago.

But even though I think it's worth pointing out that John Boehner is lying when he claims Democrats don't have a plan to replace the sequester, it's actually unfortunate that he is lying. We should be repealing the sequester'not debating about replacing it.