Dark matter in John Boehner's pool

John Boehner used some revealing language in his press conference today to defend the Plan B that his caucus refused to support yesterday. In Republicanspeak, Boehner is champion of the 99%:

Listen, there was a perception created that that vote last night was going to increase taxes. Now, I disagree with that characterization of the bill. but that impression was out there. and we had a number of our members who just really didn't want to be perceived as having to raise taxes. That was the real issue. now, one of my colleagues the other night had an analogy of 100 people drowning in a pool, and then he was the lifeguard. and because he couldn't save any of them, does that mean he shouldn't have done anything? His point to them is, if I can go in there and save 99 people that are drowning, that's what I should do as a lifeguard. but the perception was out there, and a lot of our members did not want to have to deal with it.

It's no secret that in addition to cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans by leaving most of the goodies in the Bush tax cuts intact, Plan B would  raise taxes on most Americans, and raise them substantially for low-income Americans, by letting the Obama tax cuts enacted in 2009 expire. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities summarizes:

Obama pops a morning-after pill

Most progressives feel pretty good for the moment about where the president ended up in the contraception coverage controversy: upholding free access to contraception, providing an avenue for religious opt-out, leaving the GOP to feverishly conceive new contra-contraception positions.  The question is, how did Obama get there?  Brilliant plan? Lucky stumble?  Even as James Fallows' copious mid-course report card on the Obama presidency hit the internets, we had a tantalizing new chess master or pawn? conundrum

Andrew Sullivan, natch, seemed to come down heavy on the chess master side. But how heavy? In a generally judicious and well-documented Newsweek piece, this ambiguously-phrased claim stuck out: