The next four days may bring more unpredictable twists and turns, but, at the moment at least, it appears the GOP is poised — again — to secure a significant strategic victory in the debt-limit fight — but only if the party is willing to seize it.
That’s far from certain, as the last 24 hours have shown. At this time yesterday, most everyone assumed the original Boehner plan would pass sometime in the early evening hours, after the last few “yes” votes were secured. But that didn’t happen. The bill’s Republican opponents held out. And so no vote was taken, and everyone woke up this morning wondering if Speaker Boehner’s bill would ever pass. Now the bill has indeed passed the House, thanks to an amendment that requires that both the House and the Senate to pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution before a second increase in the debt limit can go into effect next year. That was enough to put the vote over the top and send the measure to the Senate.
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But that’s far from the end of the story. It’s been apparent for days now that Senator Reid and his Democratic colleagues aren’t going to simply pass the Boehner plan as-is, especially now that it includes the balanced-budget-amendment requirement. To get this bill through the Senate and to the president’s desk, the GOP is going to have to give the Democrats something. And that something is almost certainly what the president has said is his bottom-line demand at this late hour: an assurance that there will not be another debt-limit showdown before the November 2012 election. That could be accomplished by dropping the balanced-budget-amendment requirement and substituting for it a modified version of the McConnell proposal from a few weeks ago. Under that formulation, the president could unilaterally increase the debt limit next spring if the “super committee” set up by the Boehner plan does not produce another $1.6 trillion or so in deficit reduction. Republicans would have the opportunity to vote against this second debt-limit increase, but they would need a two-thirds majority to override the inevitable presidential veto.
Many House Republicans will be very upset if this is the compromise that comes out of the Senate and goes back to the House for another vote before Tuesday. But they shouldn’t be. Because, even with such a compromise in the final legislation, the bill would represent a significant strategic victory for the GOP. The president would be denied what he wanted most out of this process — which is GOP acquiescence to a massive tax hike. All of the deficit reduction would come from spending cuts. There would be no “grand bargain” for Obama to tout going into 2012, and no tacit approval of Obamacare from GOP agreement to minimalist entitlement “reforms.” Most especially, the GOP would be seen as acting responsibly to defuse the potential for turmoil and chaos post–August 2.
Some in the GOP may lament that giving the president this out will take the pressure off the “super committee” to actually produce another round of real deficit reduction. That shouldn’t be a concern. Indeed, it should be a relief to the GOP if the “super committee” is rendered toothless — because nothing good will ever come of it. With this president in the Oval Office, there’s no chance that genuine entitlement reform will get enacted, as the Bowles-Simpson commission demonstrated (Obamacare was left entirely in place in the commission’s plan). It is more likely that a disaster would ensue when one wavering Republican on the “super committee” agreed to a “grand bargain” along the lines of what the president was pushing in June and July. That would force both the House and the Senate to vote, up or down, on the “super committee” recommendations, meaning there would be a very real chance that a massive tax hike would pass with very little on the entitlement side in return.
Far better for the GOP to allow the president to raise the debt limit on his own, and make him own it — and the faltering economy, too.
To win the political endgame, the GOP must see that this victory is at hand — and seize it. In particular, that means a good portion of Republican House members must be willing to go along with a Boehner-Reid compromise. If they don’t, the package will almost certainly move further toward what Democrats want as Tuesday approaches, and the Republican victory that is now there for the taking will have passed.
— James C. Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He was an associate director at the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004.
Can somebody please explain to me how 5 Democrats voted for a very Conservative CCB plan and 0 Democrats for a Liberal Republican plan? I smell something and it stinks.
RINO's in the Senate like Sen. Wormtounge (McCain) and (Slimy) Alexander (retiring I hear THANK GOD!are going to agree to Reids socialist garbage), it goes back to House ALL (D)'s support it. Regardless country goes South and Democrats and RINO's end up getting blame.
I am really starting to wonder why the Republicans invested so much political capital in a struggle that could not really have had a positive outcome at all.
Raising the debt ceiling is probably not the right place to debate cutting spending. Maybe they just should have ignored it and forced the president to stop spending because he can't borrow more money? (All that 14th amendment nonsense notwithstanding.)
" the bill would represent a significant strategic victory for the GOP"
Your side keeps saying this without describing anything that sounds like victory. Unless the McConnell plan is the RINO version of victory.
The Republicans have never discussed this issue honestly with their base. We know that because of base line budgeting that there are no real cuts. In a best case scenario, spending increases by 9 trillion dollars. How do we pay for that? By raising the debt ceiling?
By the time we finish seizing all of these victories, we will have a national debt of 26 Trillion dollars. God knows what the unemployment rate will be by then because no one seems to have a clue how to fix that problem.
At some point, the cost of servicing this debt will reach 1 trillion dollars. How do we pay for that?
But at least we "won" a political victory over the Democrats.
I could have responded in like manner to any of several posts here, but the reference to "your side" caught my attention.
I thought we were supposed to be on the same side. I thought there was universal agreement among conservatives that the Obama administration had to be voted out of office before it could inflict more danger on the republic. I never realize the real enemy was John Boehner, who has accumulated a lifetime conservative score of 94 out of 100 possible points, according to the American Conservative Union. I didn't realize that Eric Cantor, with a lifetime ACU score of 97, posed the greatest threat to our liberties. Somehow, I thought the object was to make sure that Nancy Pelosi (3) and Chuck Schumer (6) were prevented from writing the nation's laws and that Obama (O) would no longer be using his executive powers to push nationalized health care, appoint far left judges who will preside for decades and quadruple the federal debt.
Is the GOP House's inablity to enforce its complete will on a Democratic congressman and a Democratic President worth matching the latter with a Democratic House again? Do you really think this nation will be better off if Obama stays in office, adds to his growing legion of activist judges and continues his campaign to turn American into a European socialist democracy?
Have we now arrived at the point that a national hero like Allen West is being targeted for defeat by some Tea Party "leaders" because he had the audacity to vote for a debt ceiling increase that included, for the first time in American history, spending cuts and a requirement for a postive balanced budget amendment vote?
Have some of the people posting here completely lost their minds? That is not a rhetorical question...
Your basic assumptions are flawed, since you have obviously bought into the conventional wisdom hook, line, and sinker. You also talk as if this whole sordid mess just started recently, but the reality is that Boehner and his crew are just more in a long line of Republican cave-men stretching back over at least 50 years.
I also am more than a little tired of the by now standard bleat from the Boehner apologists... the oh-so-nuanced assertions about perceptions, psychology and adult behavior would all be laughable if they weren't so damaging to conservatives and ultimately the nation. You have learned nothing from history, thus your conclusions about the root of the problem are flawed. Although I doubt it will do any good, I urge you to read the following one-page link...
Ultimately, I look at it this way: after decades of letting progressive vipers into the house, who do I blame, the vipers which are only acting according to their nature, or the feckless idiots who repeatedly compromised with them and allowed their entry?
I think I see the problem here... there is a decided difference in our respective definitions of 'conservative'. The Tea Party wants to stop progressives from driving our nation off a cliff, while NRO and the bulk of the Boehner apologists on these pages think the adult, polite thing to do is to slow down how fast they're driving. To these latter, the definition of 'conservative' is to conserve all the gains made by progressives as they've waged their culture war to transform our society into a tribal, backward, egalitarian swamp. That may be your definition, but I'm having none of it.
Ah yes, thank you Mr. Capretta, who represents the same careerist insiders with the same line... stand on no underlying principles whatsoever, compromise by caving in to the progressives, then declare victory and go home, all accompanied by marvelous nuanced political plays and ploys that exhibit the most erudite thinking of the cognoscenti.
Back in reality, let's talk about what will really happen: Reid will gut the bill and send it back to the House, daring the Repubs to do something about it. Obama will demagogue about the intransigent Republicans to not pass Reid's bill. The Old Left Media will pleasantly spin the issues his way as usual, and the great unwashed American voter (whoever that may be these days) will lap up the propaganda with nary a dissenting thought in their heads, in large part because the Repubs yet again exhibited no principled action, with the most logical conclusion being it was because they must not have had any underlying principles in the first place. The typical voting blocks living on the progressive plantation will then go marching merrily off to the voting booth in November and re-elect Obama and the Dems with a comfortable majority in the Senate, and increased power in the House.
Meanwhile, the doddering old fools who comprise the Boehner apologists will go off muttering into their beards about 'Rome wasn't built in a day', and 'psychology of the American voter', and 'wait until next year (next election, next decade, next century)'. Yes, I'm so glad this has all worked out for the best. And it will definitely trump those terrible Tea Partiers, such fanatics every one of them having the unmitigated gall to try to actually make meaningful change to this nation's march into the abyss.
Amen brother! What I don't understand about these political game chessmasters is why can't you see Obama will lose if the GOP holds strong. The great unwashed who don't follow things closely will hear the reports that the GOP scuttled the bill, but then they wake up the next day and have no job, unemployment runs out, bills don't get paid... and who is in charge? Obama. He is getting killed in this debate.
Those Americans who pay the bills are awake. They are BEGGING for a responsible leader who can cut spending to levels before the trillion dollar stimulus was added to the baseline. I thought that was a one time fix. Nope. Nancy swindled us there.
Make Obama Do something for a change. He will make a mistake. he always does. When this bill comes back to the House, GOP hold the freakin line!
Mr. Capretta Phyrus had such strategic victories as this. The Romans won the war. This is the beginning of the end for RINOs and CINOS such as yourself.
Well if that's the bargaining chip - why should the GOP just give it up? Obama can not justify holding out for something that hurts his image ... so demand steep cuts in return for this chip.
Who are these people, these corporatist, establishment types? Even a novice, never involved in the process could see what's coming a mile away?
Boehner sold out conservatives from the jump. He's going to win passage of the Reid bill with no accountability and probably tax hikes, no spending cuts and a demoralized base with nearly 100% of the Dem caucus and a few establishment types.
I would say more but I might want to comment on the foolishness at NRO again some day.
Politics, politics, politics.... always such concern among the ruling class elites about how it will play on the nightly news. Clearly our rulers have never moved past junior high, still worried about who is in the popular crowd and who is not.
Meanwhile everyday Americans (really our kids and grandkids) will be stuck living with the consequences of their inaction about things that actually matter in the grown up world. None of the bills being proposed actually decreases the national debt, they all just affect the rate of growth thanks to baseline budgeting.
Real cuts MUST be made NOW!!! The politics be damned and the media reaction be damned!! The longer we wait, the worse the final fall will be. The gravy train is over, only the Washington establishment is still in denial, which sadly includes many at NRO.
Andy McCarthy's NRO article today is spot on about this.
Boehner, McConnell, and the boys tipped their hand before negotiations began when they all agreed that the debt ceiling would eventually be raised.
Once again, we find ourselves arguing the speed of travel, rather than the direction.
Does the Speaker not understand that our credit rating is based on our existing debt, current deficit, and our ability to service/repay it?
Why has he seemingly accepted the premise of the president...that is that only borrowing more money will soothe investors already nervous about what we've already borrowed?
The failure to address baseline budgeting reveals the contempt the Republican leadership holds for its grassroots, Tea Party base.
Not only hold the line when Reid's bill goes back to the house move it forward with a rewrite of cut cap and balance or Mack's "penny plan". With what is coming to the economy Obama and his minions are toast in Nov 2012. Let the libs try to pin the blame on republicans. The longer this debate goes on the more foolish the left looks. May the truth prevail.
Anyone else getting tired of all the "more conservative than thou", spineless-caving-RINO-bashing posts around here? Come on guys, it's not FreeRepublic here.
Our system of government is intentionally designed to thwart rapid change and to require sustained majority public support for major shifts. Maybe Boehner et al. are honestly trying to achieve the best they can in the current circumstances, with a view toward growing the public support for fundamental reform (still not nearly a majority) so that more can be done.
How about at least a temporary truce on questioning both the masculinity of the Congressional leadership and the intelligence of the Tea Partiers?
