The New Year’s Eve deal to avoid the fiscal cliff isn’t just a
lousy deal: it’s entirely corrupt. Obama insisted on what he called
a “balanced deal,” but to him a balance is only between increased
government spending and higher taxes. It allowed President Obama to
pretend that the deal reduces federal spending by $732 billion over
the next ten years though, in fact, it increases federal spending
— by $332 billion — more than it cuts.
And it did precisely nothing about federal spending. In fact, it
adds $4 trillion in new debt over the next decade.
The fiscal cliff deal was nothing more than a bridge from one
cliff to another. If we’d gone over that cliff, the damage done
could have been remedied quickly. None of the tax hikes the
so-called “fiscal cliff” would have imposed would have been
permanent. They could have been reduced to their pre-cliff levels
by the legislation that is now going to be another “must-pass” deal
on the federal debt ceiling mess next month.
And now — with the eager help of the media — the next cliff is
far higher than the last one. The New Year’s Eve deal only delayed
by two months the sequestration cuts that will gut the Pentagon.
Obama’s leverage on the sequestration is retained. Add to that
Obama’s setup up of Joe Biden’s gun control task force to report in
the midst of the next debt ceiling crisis and you have a higher
cliff than the last one.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal) has delayed the introduction of
her gun control bill to await the broader, more aggressive
proposals that Biden produces. She and Obama will couple the gun
control bill and the debt ceiling “crises” so that regardless of
whether it’s one massive bill or two — raising the debt ceiling
and imposing a national gun control regime — it will pass the
Senate and be laid on the steps of the House in one big lump, at
the last moment.
Obama has indicated that he wants more tax hikes. Yesterday,
Sen. McConnell made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows and again
rejected the idea of more tax hikes. He told ABC’s George
Stephanopoulos, “The tax issue is finished, over, completed.”
McConnell added, “That’s behind us. Now the question is what are we
going to do about the biggest problem confronting our country and
our future, and that’s our spending addiction.”
But it’s not over until Obama has been defeated on it, and so
far he hasn’t been.
Obama will — again — push the new “crisis” to the brink. Obama
has learned that he can win by waiting until the very last moment
because the Republicans will give him what he wants rather than
take the blame for what he calls their failure. Obama and Treasury
Secretary Geithner will be demanding that Republicans act and
telling the world that the Republicans are risking a downgrade in
our international credit and threatening a government shutdown.
Republicans will be left to defend their demand for spending
cuts in return for a debt ceiling hike against a tidal wave of
pressure from the media and Obama’s unified liberal congressional
base. And they will have to do that at the same time they’re
opposing the Obama-Feinstein demand for gun controls.
The February debate will be another masterful exercise of
brinksmanship by Obama. Unless Republicans are willing to shut down
the government and risk another downgrade to our credit rating,
they will lose again.
Obama keeps winning because he’s willing to take political risks
that Republicans won’t. Obama refused deal after deal on the fiscal
cliff and held out right up to the moment we’d fall off the cliff.
House Republicans — the 151 of them who voted against the New
Year’s Eve deal — were brave enough to refuse any deal that didn’t
cut spending. But Senate Minority Leader McConnell didn’t just cave
in, he engineered the deal with Joe Biden, leaving House
Republicans with the choice between accepting the whole blame for a
middle-class tax hike or going along with McConnell’s deal.
The political map has changed since the New Year’s Eve fiscal
cliff deal. Boehner, just re-elected Speaker, has to listen to the
151 conservatives who voted against “Plan B” in order to pass any
deal on the debt ceiling. Boehner no longer has the power to cut
more secret deals with the White House. McConnell, too, has less of
a free hand because of the new, vocal conservative members in his
caucus such as Texas’s Ted Cruz. To McConnell’s credit, on the
Sunday shows he didn’t rule out shutting down the government if
Obama won’t go along with spending cuts.
Republicans haven’t faced the fact that the fiscal and gun
control fights are ideological battles. Conservative principles of
smaller government, fiscal responsibility, and Second Amendment
rights are being surrendered to liberal ideals which are the
precise opposites.
Obama will demand the debt ceiling hike — and more taxes and
DiFi’s gun control bill — and use sequestration of Pentagon
spending as leverage. If there’s no deal on the debt ceiling,
sequestration will be imposed automatically. Obama has no incentive
to stop sequestration, reform the entitlement programs, or avoid a
government shutdown because the public is ready to blame
Republicans for any failure to reach a compromise.
Republicans have done a dismal job of trying to shift the blame
Obama for his failure to address the spending problem. To Obama, a
“balanced approach” requires that federal spending increase while
taxes rise. That’s what the New Year’s Eve deal did. Republicans
can’t allow that to happen again.
It’s become fashionable to quote Margaret Thatcher’s words that
first you win the argument, then you win the election. To do that,
Republicans have to make this an ideological fight. That’s doubly
hard for them because their ideology has been muddled and diffused
for almost a decade.
That’s not to say that it isn’t recoverable. The recovery may
have begun yesterday with Sen. McConnell’s insistence that more tax
hikes are ruled out. But he, and the rest of the congressional
Republicans, not only have to stick with that, they have to do a
lot more.
McConnell — despite the lousy New Year’s Eve deal — is still
the strongest conservative among the congressional Republicans.
Others — potential leaders — have to join with him and with
Republican governors to campaign for the next several months on the
real fiscal crisis which is government overspending. They need to
campaign relentlessly, getting Republican governors such as
Indiana’s Mike Pence, Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal and Virginia’s Bob
McDonnell to join them in a media onslaught painting Obama as
dangerous for our economy and our future.
And, if they can walk and chew gum at the same time, Republicans
have to get ahead of Obama and Feinstein on gun control with their
own ideas. There’s a lot to be done to improve school safety —
principally to get the dangerous mentally ill off the streets —
that will be vastly more effective than gun control.
It will be a tough campaign. And a campaign it is, just like the
ones Republicans lost in 2008, won in 2010, and lost in 2012. They
need to take it to the brink on the debt ceiling, absorb a
government shutdown, and defeat gun control if they are to regain
any advantage in Obama’s second term. If they don’t win this one,
it will be their last stand. They will deserve to remain in the
political wilderness for a very long time.
