Earlier today, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) released a letter to President Obama with the House’s counter-offer to President Obama’s fiscal cliff proposal. From the letter, seen at the Speaker’s website:
With the fiscal cliff nearing, our priority remains finding a reasonable solution that can pass both the House and the Senate, and be signed into law in the next couple of weeks. The best way to do this is by learning from and building on the bipartisan discussions that have occurred during this Congress, including the Biden Group, the Joint Select Committee, and our negotiations leading up to the Budget Control Act.
For instance, on November 1 of last year, Erskine Bowles, the co-chair of your debt commission, presented the Joint Select Committee with a middle ground approach that garnered praise from many fiscal watchdogs and nonpartisan experts. He recommended that both parties agree to a balanced package that includes significant spending cuts as well as $800 billion in new revenue.
Notably, the new revenue in the Bowles plan would not be achieved through higher tax rates, which we continue to oppose and will not agree to in order to protect small businesses and our economy. Instead, new revenue would be generated through pro-growth tax reform that closes special-interest loopholes and deductions while lowering rates. On the spending side, the Bowles recommendation would cut more than $900 billion in mandatory spending and another $300 billion in discretionary spending. These cuts would be over and above the spending reductions enacted in the Budget Control Act.
This is by no means an adequate long-term solution, as resolving our long-term fiscal crisis will require fundamental entitlement reform. Indeed, the Bowles plan is exactly the kind of imperfect, but fair middle ground that allows us to avert the fiscal cliff without hurting our economy and destroying jobs. We believe it warrants immediate consideration.
This proposal by Speaker Boehner is eminently reasonable for a debate in Washington. Which is why it’s a totally inadequate counter-proposal, for at least three reasons:
First, while the President’s proposal was a ridiculous offer, that’s where negotiations are supposed to start in debates like this one. The left starts on the left, the right starts on the right. Unfortunately, while President Obama is starting off to the left, Boehner is already starting off with a relatively centrist proposal.
Personally, I’d advise the Speaker to start with a truly conservative plan — perhaps something like $600 billion in specific cuts plus $300 billion in eliminated tax loopholes (with concurrent lower rates), all in place by December 31, 2013, and modest means-testing of Social Security and Medicare. Cuts could include elimination of various corporate and other subsidies, fraud, inefficiency, and waste prevention, food stamp reductions and welfare means-testing, and modest defense cuts.
“That’s too conservative!” some will wail. That’s true. Which is why negotiation then may head more to the center. But starting at minor cuts and tax increases (and trusting politicians to implement them in multiple Congresses) is unwise.
Second, the Speaker’s offer assumes the elimination of tax loopholes means those loopholes will go towards deficit reduction. While it’s a nice thought, does the Speaker really trust this President to hold firm to that promise? Higher taxes will almost certainly go towards new spending.
Lastly, Boehner’s offer is a clear capitulation on the House’s power in these kinds of negotiations. The fact is that while the House is only one-third of the negotiators in these discussions, the GOP holds all the cards in that one-third. Which means that if the House leadership is truly concerned about the fiscal future of the country — a future that looks quite dim right now — it should make a conservative offer and then go home, as the President similarly went on vacation after putting his offer forward. Negotiating a weak deal will simply allow the country to sink further, while a good plan could allow for an economic rebound and hope for a future not burdened by massive debt.
I have a great deal of sympathy for Speaker Boehner. At heart, he seems like a nice guy who simply wants to negotiate in good faith. Unfortunately, the nation’s fiscal problems were partially created by such negotiations, and thus require more than centrist “good faith” compromises. Just as importantly, he is dealing with a President who clearly has no interest in good faith, and so negotiating the way the Speaker is basically is an admission of defeat. Just not a formal one.
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The problem with what you advance is that you make the same mistake that you accuse Boehner of making; assuming that Obama is negotiating in good faith, even though you yourself acknowledge that he is not. No offense but there’s a bit of cognitive dissonance in your reasoning.
Here’s why; if Boehner makes a conservative offer, one that he expects Obama to counter offer to, he will be sorely disappointed. Obama will simply refuse to negotiate further and claim that the ‘obstructionist republicans’ made a ‘insane’ offer that ‘proves beyond doubt’ that republicans place service to the rich ahead of the good of the country. The MSM will completely support him in that characterization and you can bet your bottom dollar that Geitner’s insane offer will never be acknowledged in the reports by the MSM.
Obama doesn’t want a deal, he wants America to go over the fiscal cliff because he sees that outcome as highly advantageous to him and the democrats.
For a variety of reasons but mostly because in the left and MSM blaming the republican’s for the middle classes coming fiscal pain, he hopes to ensure that the democrats will regain a majority in Congress. It’s his best chance of doing so and he needs that, if he’s going to move beyond gridlock and achieve that ‘fundamental transformation of America’ for which he hungers.
Obama’s behavior is not about negotiating the best deal he can get. It’s about positioning the democrats for 2014. Taking back the House, increasing his Senate majority and implementing far more radical legislation.
He’s ‘swinging for the fences’ hoping to hit it out of the park…
I agree that that’s his motivation, based on the presumption that he can just blame Republicans and waltz away unscathed, but there are two problems: (1) The people who voted for him the second time are weary of just making do. Average household income continues to plunge, and even Obama supporters are sick of struggling to make ends meet while he goes on $4 million vacations. (2) He now has his legacy to begin stewing about. Second terms are notoriously noxious for presidents. I don’t think an egotist such as he is wants to be remembered for all posterity as someone who destroyed the economy and with it the planet Earth’s last best hope.
Geoffrey, excellent point. That’s why I wrote that Boehner should make an offer and go home.
Yes but my point is that should Boehner do that, he hands Obama, and his democrat shills like Reid and Pelosi the political ammunition that the MSM needs to falsely ‘paint’ Boehner as obstructionist, not serious and a minion of the rich. ie Boehner made an insane offer and then walked away, taking a”take it or leave it attitude”…They’ll accuse Boehner of the very thing they’re doing and continue to snow the public, with the false charge that republicans are guilty of the very thing Obama is doing, while continueing to portray Obama as the reasonable one.
The inaccuracy of that characterization is irrelevant, the ‘charge’ will, IMO ‘stick’ and I base that assessment upon the fact that the 2012 election demonstrates that to be a fact.
HP, re:#1, i can’t feel empathy for those folks, when they had the opportunity to change things, they said nope…they will have to reap what they sow
cmsinaz, I don’t feel empathy for them. As you write, they brought this on themselves—and sadly us.
My point, rather, is that down the road they will behold what they sowed … and feel revulsion. They will need someone to blame. Congress is an amporphous entity, whereas the president is someone whose likeness you can affix to a dartboard. My sense is that he will be the scapegoat, much to his own chagrin.
gotcha HP
Portnoy @ 6:21,
The very ‘problems’ you cite are exactly the problems that led me and many others to predict that Romney would win. Obama now has a record and people have been tired or the bad economy for years..yet he still won. What is different now? Other than your presupposition that people are finally tired enough and will ‘finally’ see that Obama’s prescriptions are the reason for continued failure?
I have reached the reluctant conclusion that American culture has effectively reached its tipping point, that 47+% and some massive but judiciously applied voter fraud in key swing states has resulted in America ‘voting’ for the soft tyranny of dependency. I also suspect that when the coming fiscal collapse occurs, they will inadvertently turn to the demagogue’s promises with its resultant hard tyranny of oppression.
2012 was a referendum and the vote, falsely or not was to, knowingly or not, end modern civilization and the American experiment in representative democracy.
I’m not big on conspiracy theories but this one comes straight out of the overactive imagination of Glenn Beck. Obama wants to be liked and remembered well. People who were convinced he was the answer will now be hoisted by their own petard. He is the most convenient target of blame.
it remains the sacred duty of the Republican Party to resist any compromise with the American government.
It is not compromise we resist but betrayal of the American public.
Portnoy @ 7:13,
Ah, conspiracy theory and overactive imagination…indeed. Time will tell. If it turns out that rather than overactive imagination, it is a case of denial upon your part, will you have the intellectual honesty to acknowledge it or will you conveniently ‘forget’ having made that charge and dismissal?
Here’s the difference between our points of view; I pray that you are correct and I in error.
But consider, you had best pray that you are in fact correct and, I in error or you (and America) will find yourself up the proverbial “creek without a paddle”.
Geoffrey, that’s not the way I operate, but if it turns out I’m wrong demonstrating intellectual honesty will be the least of my problems.
The counter offer only makes sense if it is basically the final offer from the Republicans. It may be if there is no counter offer from the admin and there is little to indicate there will be one.
Dear Leader is not negotiating at all, much less negotiating in good faith. Not that he ever negotiated in good faith before.
If Boehner and the GOP have concluded he probably wants to go over the cliff, then putting their best offer on the table before that makes sense, though they could have waited a bit longer. Then start planning ahead, knowing in advance what the enemy will do. No real need to consider what counter offers there might be and how to respond.
And yes, Dear Leader has clearly established he is a mortal enemy who is trying to destroy the GOP. His irrational demand for a fiscally meaningless putative tax on the “wealthy” that can only hurt the economy while do nothing to reduce the deficit only makes sense as a socialist class warfare warrior attempt to destroy the political opposition.
GB is correct. Obummer’s handlers get almost all of what they want if we go over the “cliff”. Tax increases, spending cuts in defense, a solidifying of the non-budget budget (CRs at 8% baseline growth in pet programs as long as Harry runs the country.) However, they don’t get everything, and they are desperate for the final piece needed to obviate the need for the Constitution.
The only power that they lack is the power to extend the debt ceiling. That is what their principle target is. They want the GOP to surrender Congress’s power of the purse. Hidden in this past two week’s news was the key agenda point, Timmy “The Tax Cheat” slipped that little side mumble about doing away with the debt ceiling, or allowing the (Only Democrat) President to increase it without Congressional approval.
If this occurs, all bets are off. The Republic is officially dead, and further elections, negotiations, budgets, legislation… all of it is pointless. Why? Because they’ll just leave the current budget in place into perpetuity, and raise the debt limit to cover it. The debt is owed by people yet to be aborted, so who cares? It means nothing to the Democrats.
Conspiracies do exist, and they are often very successful, at least in destroying the status quo.
Ridicule is a powerful tool, and it is deployed ruthlessly by the Left, and cripples the right… Too many people on our side pooh-pooh what they think are the “conspiracies of impure motives”. The Democrat Party has never, since the critical and transitional election of 1824, been a party of more than the populist mob being manipulated by the powerful elites. It has been all about destroying the Constitution, and the Republic since its bastard birthing at Tammany Hall.
It is, I’ll be nice, a Pollyanna like dream, to think that Obambi is more than a puppet. He is where he is because powerful people want him there. “They” get benefit from him, and he enables their draining of the public purse into their pockets for their reasons.
Finally the mob has enough mass to trample even the most determined opposition. The One’s “offer” was no negotiating point. It was a “blow off” that basically said “This is what we want, take it, or take it. We’ll win and you’ll pay, SUCKER…”
The best thing that the GOP can do for itself and whatever survives of this nation in the next 50 years of bankruptcy and dissolution is to walk away. Let the debt ceiling stand, let the sequestration cuts occur, the Democrat taxes go back into place, and the economy tank, because nothing they can do will stop that event.
As to the blame. The DNC/MSM – Ministry of Truth, will spin what it spins. The lies, are churned out, and the trolls will spout them with slavish devotion. To complete an over used analogy; the hooptie drove off the cliff in January 2007.
The Democrats took both houses of Congress; everything since then has been useless arm flapping, and pointless wishful thinking. We have been in free fall and all the arm flapping in the world isn’t going to prevent the crash.
All brought to you by a concerted conspiracy by a powerful group of very wealthy people to maintain their hold on power and money.
The Hellenistic Greeks, The Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, The Chinese Ming Dynasty, any number of conglomerations of European nations/Empires… They all collapsed of corruption, conspiracy, and fiscal rape of the population.
Our children and grandchildren will live in a different world, that’s for sure.
-John – The Mighty Fahvaag