I don’t agree with President Obama on
much. Okay, maybe that’s an understatement. But that’s not to say that I’ve
never agreed with him on anything, which I have; there was that time in 2006
when then-Senator Obama declared that "America has a debt problem and a
failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose
the effort to increase America’s debt limit." Since he’s been the
President he’s apparently changed his mind, as he now demands automatic
increases with no strings attached.
Which brings us to the latest showdown,
or lack thereof. In way that I cannot explain, it almost seems as if a
semi-orderly Republican surrender on the debt-limit issue is just as
politically dramatic as a to-the-wire showdown on the issue. As of tonight, a “clean”
increase in the debt-limit is through the House and Senate, and on its way to
the President’s desk, where upon signing the Treasury’s borrowing authority
will be extending until roughly March of 2015; as some have been quick to
point out, this is the first time that the House GOP has all but given up the
issue without any real fight for concessions.
The blame falls, not very surprisingly,
with Speaker Boehner. There are certainly times that I don’t begrudge him his
job, and this is one of them. The debt-ceiling is a complex issue. Is it a
concession of failure to address a growing debt problem that we have to so
frequently raise it? Without question. But is it so worthwhile to push the
issue that the rewards match the risks of coming down to the line on a default?
Not in my book. Especially not anymore.
With all of their leverage in 2011, the
best that the House Conference could pull out of strenuous negotiations with
the President and the Senate Democratic leadership was the Budget Control Act;
you know things aren’t going well when the now-eviscerated source of my
favorite 2013 word, “sequester,” is a relative beacon of fiscal responsibility.
Since then, Republican extractions from these showdowns have become smaller and
more spaced out, simultaneously as the Congressional Republicans have become
more divided.
After three years on the job, I don’t
think that forming a unifying strategy should be too much to ask of Speaker
Boehner; yet once again, he fails to move things along without Democratic
votes. I don’t blame every instance of such an occurrence on him, but in this
case he shoulders an overwhelming share of the blame. As recently as Monday
night, I had understood that the House Conference had developed something of a
strategy: tie restoration of military benefit cuts from the Ryan-Murray
compromise to an increase in the debt limit. I also understand that, as with
several prior attempted pitches, the “rank-and-file” refused on the grounds
that any increase was unacceptable.
To call this initial rejection a failure
on the Speaker’s part would be unfair, but his complete inability to press the
matter was. The strategy wasn’t far-fetched: if it worked, controversial benefit
reductions were undone; if it didn’t, then the Democrats had that on their
record (after voting on the debt-ceiling proposal, the House and Senate both
overwhelmingly passed the military pension measure, this time without any
pressure on the Democrats to “give the Republicans what they want”).
The big story out of the Senate today is
that Minority Leader McConnell led the charge to invoke cloture on Senator Cruz’s
filibuster against raising the debt-ceiling; naturally, Tea Party groups are
angered, most notably McConnell’s primary challenger Matt Bevin. But I have to
defend McConnell here: it’s not like he did it because he wanted to, or because
it’s politically convenient for him; he did it because there was no other
choice. The bill that arrived on the Senate floor was in its basest form,
lacking in House GOP entanglements. If the Senate failed to pass the measure, there
was no other way to avoid ramming the ceiling; the House already put on full
display last night that they have nothing
productive left to offer this
go-round.
If that’s not a failure of leadership, I
don’t know what is.
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