While the White House and congressional Republicans shadow box
on the verge of the fiscal cliff, the federal government is busy
digging below the cliff and raising its height. According to a
Congressional Budget Office report released on Friday, the federal
government borrows 46 cents of each dollar it spends. We’re only
two months into Fiscal Year 2013 and the debt has already increased
by about $300 billion.
On Friday, Speaker Boehner told the press, “This isn’t a
progress report because there’s no progress to report.” That’s one
part of the good news. The other part is that whatever deal Boehner
and Obama may yet reach isn’t guaranteed to pass into law.
Boehner’s purge of dissenting conservatives from key committees
should have pushed his conservative members too far. Removing from
the budget committee those who didn’t support the Ryan budget
because it didn’t do enough to balance the budget — which it
didn’t — Boehner is stamping out conservatives’ ability to affect
House action. If they go along with him — if they vote for a
Boehner-engineered deal that raises taxes without major spending
cuts including Social Security and Medicare cuts — they shouldn’t
be re-elected in 2014.
Conservatives know that, but Boehner apparently doesn’t care.
Boehner is so desperate to keep his personal power as Speaker, he’s
apparently willing to throw the conservatives overboard. Boehner is
thinking as if he were a liberal: his cognitive dissonance believes
that he can preserve his power by sacrificing the conservative
margin by which he holds it.
The question comes down to this: how long will House
conservatives go along with Boehner’s political malpractice in
dealing with Obama? This problem isn’t new. When Obama came into
office in 2009, Boehner forbade House Republicans from criticizing
the new president. A bunch of House members called me asking for
help and as a result of press pressure from me and others, Boehner
relented.
At that point, Boehner was only Minority Leader. When he took
the speakership, he continued to push conservatives to go along
with his deals. They did so on the 2011 Budget Control Act which
raised the debt ceiling and didn’t cut spending. It booted the
issue to the so-called “supercommittee” which, inevitably, failed
to agree. Thus was the fiscal cliff created. Under the BCA, tax
hikes take effect in January and sequestration takes another
$500-$600 billion out of the defense budget. Another $500 billion
comes out of domestic spending and nothing was done to reform the
programs that are bankrupting the nation, Medicare and Social
Security.
So far, even Boehner’s purge of dissenting conservatives hasn’t
forced them to rebel. What happens when Boehner makes a fiscal
cliff deal that hikes taxes without cutting federal spending and
reducing the federal debt?
That’s the conservatives’ problem. They were elected to reduce
what the government spends, and so far they haven’t. If we go over
the cliff and those cuts go along with the huge increase in tax
rates, Republicans are going to take the blame. A new Pew poll
confirms that.
They’ll take the blame because they voted for the sequestration
bill in the Budge Control Act. People see it as their deal, not
Obama’s.
Obama, Durbin, and the rest of the Dems are insisting that
Social Security and Medicare be unaffected by any fiscal cliff
deal. They engineered the Budget Control Act sequestration deal so
that if it happens, both of those entitlement programs are exempt
from the cuts it imposes.
As George Will pointed out recently, falling off the fiscal
cliff would accomplish a substantial part of Obama’s second-term
agenda. He’d get the tax hikes he wants, the defense cuts he’s been
working for all along, and all without cutting Social Security and
Medicare, two of the biggest reasons that federal spending is out
of control.
The only way to avoid falling over the cliff will be to make a
deal that accomplishes what Obama wants most: a deal that preserves
spending and still raises taxes. Boehner is a creature of the deal:
he’ll make a bad deal unless conservatives rebel and either prevent
it behind the scenes or refuse to vote for it once it’s made.
To do so will require a lot of political courage. If Boehner
wins — if he makes a bad deal and it’s passed into law — his
retribution against those who opposed him could be damaging, but
only inside the halls of Congress. The 2010 conservatives and those
who were elected before them came to Washington to reduce federal
spending. It’ll be easier to explain their opposition to Boehner
than it would to explain it to angry constituents why they backed
the Speaker.
Conservatives are at a turning point. If they go along with a
bad deal now they won’t be able to take a stand against it in the
next two to four years. Obama wants to eliminate Republicans’
ability to thwart his actions. He’d be satisfied with no deal on
the fiscal cliff or to get one that is a terrible deal for
conservatives.
Those are the only choices conservatives will have. If they give
in now, they’ll not be able to stand against any but the smallest
of Obama initiatives for the foreseeable future. There will be no
bills passed that stop Obama’s regulatory strangulation of the
economy, because they won’t pass the Senate. There will be no
stopping Obama’s emasculation of the military because it’s already
done so much damage that can’t be undone without strong Republican
leadership and a defense secretary who wants to undo it, which will
never be the case while Obama is in the White House.
If just a few conservative rebels tell Boehner they won’t vote
for a bad deal they can prevent him from making one. They need to
agree among themselves on how to tell a good deal from a bad one,
and that’s the easy part. A good deal is one that doesn’t raise tax
rates for anyone. A good deal makes enough spending cuts — now,
not in another “if-then” deal — to cut the federal debt in half in
ten years or less without gutting the defense budget. A good deal
will reduce and reform both Social Security and Medicare to ensure
their solvency and decrease their cost.
If only a few conservatives make that their public position,
others will join them both publicly and privately. They can block a
bad deal if they try.
In the fiscal cliff negotiations, Obama has an opportunity to
moot Republican opposition to his agenda for his entire second
term. If conservatives take a stand now, they can thwart him and at
the same time rein in their wayward Speaker. If they don’t, they
may not get another chance in the next four years. No deal is
better than a bad deal, for the nation and for every congressional
conservative.
