I am kicking myself that I didn’t see this coming. Of course, it might not work either, so I can’t be blamed for not seeing the outlines of the capitulation. Here’s what I knew. I knew that Boehner wants to raise the debt limit but he can’t get enough votes from his own party to accomplish this. I knew that he’d have to go to the Democrats for votes, and that he might discover that he needed more Democratic votes than Republican ones. His problem? Passing a Democrat-majority bill would probably cost him his Speakership.
So, Mitch McConnell came to the rescue by openly signaling the Republicans’ willingness to capitulate. It’s a pretty ingenious plan. The Republicans will give away their ability to hold the economy hostage in exchange for the right to bitch about the debt limit two more times before election day 2012. The Tea Partiers are furious.
The president offered them a sweet deal and they turned it down and then said, “Mr. President, why don’t you take this gun we’ve been holding to the economy’s head. We’re too irresponsible to keep it.”
It works out great for the GOP. They don’t have to break any promises about raising taxes. They can continue to grouse about the deficit. They can vote against lifting the debt limit three times without it actually preventing the debt limit from going up. It’s the perfect cop-out.
And, if it passes, it will pass the exact way I predicted: with mostly Democratic votes.
But I don’t know if it will pass. The House Republicans haven’t signed off on the plan, and the president wants the debt limit off his plate, not the subject of constant debate between now and his reelection day.
I think Democrats should support this if they’re given the opportunity. In a way it’s a return to the status quo. The party out of power gets to use the deficit ceiling as an opportunity to bitch about the the reckless spending of the party in power without actually having to take any responsibility (something both Democrats and Republicans have taken advantage of in the past). It’s so transparently cynical, I don’t think the right wing will stand for it which will mitigate the advantage it gives Republicans (which is why I doubt Republicans will really offer this option). And it’s the right thing to do; well, actually the right thing to do would be to get rid of the debt ceiling entirely, but that would be too much to hope for.
As far as I can tell, it would be a minor political loss for Dems, but an enormous policy win. Any spending cuts “required” by this bill would be entirely theoretical, i.e. the Prez could ignore them. Unless I’m reading the reports wrong.
So, it’s hard to see why the House GOP would support this.
Dealing with this “minor political loss” is precisely why Barack Obama has been allowing leaks about his oh-so-reasonable willingness to make big entitlement cuts in return for tax increases: because it allows him to win the political, PR fight.
The people who spent the last month running around yelling “OMG! OMG!” as leak after leak came out look as silly as they did when they called Obama the Homophobe-in-Chief; when they freaked out of the mysterious, disppearing $38.5 billion in cuts in April; and when they assured us that Obama was going to flog Social Security cuts to the public in his big budget address.
The people running around yelling OMG, OMG, OMG have helped reinforce the message that Obama is going against his base. In this case, he’s played them as a kabuki chorus.
And that’s a fine, honorable, respectable, important role for them to play!
Nancy Pelosi didn’t get punked. She played her role to a T.
She also didn’t dress in all black, cut her forearms, and call Obama a Republican. She howled about the issue.
But Obama’s base has to act as crazy as the Tea Party.
And we haven’t quite mastered that yet. So we do the best we can to look like we are howling at the moon.
Correction: some people have mastered it very well. Don’t believe them.
It still won’t pass without Republican votes. Who are they going to sacrifice? They may save face with some of their faithful fools, but no Dems and only the most ignorant indies are going to be fooled. Plus, the Reps were going to bombard the airwaves with “tax and spend” garbage no matter what the outcome. The bottom line is that they broke every promise they made to their pet crazies, and all for the sake of not making the Wall Street criminals mad at them.
I’d still prefer a totally clean debt ceiling increase, but this will do nicely.
“Who are they going to sacrifice?”
There are enough Republicans in 70%+ Republican districts, who can win re-election by saying the word “abortion,” to make up the necessary last few votes.
I just loved Fred Barnes’ summary of the proposal:
“Senate Republicans mounted a bold offensive today against President Obama’s effort to force them to accept a tax hike as part of a bipartisan agreement to raise the debt limit.”
Yes that’s what happened. The evil President used the threat of a government default to force good Republicans to raise taxes, attempting to turn what should have been a routine administrative matter into a tool of extortion to push through a liberal agenda, and this is how they foiled him. It is too funny.
You mean the republicans are going to pass on 2 trillion dollars worth of budget cuts, and all they want in exchange is the opportunity to have a few meaningless protest votes between now and the election?
Holy smokes, this is the BEST NEWS EVER!!!!
ps-Let’s not blow this one, guys. Act like you’re pissed off!! We don’t want them to change their minds. You remember what happened with Joe Lieberman and medicare-at-55.
Er…um…I feel all, like, betrayed. And stuff.
Well, not betrayed betrayed. Well, no…yeah! Kinda betrayed…I guess.
(How was that?)
Here is the point at which Obama can be tough:
(1) Clean debt ceiling bill.
(2) Large enough to reasonably cover new debt until January 2013.
(3) All Republican Senators vote for it before Democratic Senators vote for it.
(4) A minimum of 218 of the 240 Republican members of the House must vote for it. Democrats will provide cover with a unanimous caucus vote. Otherwise, Democrats will put up only as many votes as Tea Party Caucus members vote for it.
I believe that gives everybody a fig leaf.
So I was right to wonder why no details were being released on what these alleged budget cuts were shaping up to be? Because there weren’t any?
AFTER TWO FUCKING MONTHS?
How do these people sleep at night holding hours and hours of negotiations where they don’t actually negotiate anything? What do they talk about when they’re in the fucking room?
No wonder it’s so easy to blow things up by offering fake proposals (like the President cannily did). There’s no foundation for anything real. It can all evaporate in an instant. I don’t get it. The money can’t possibly be good enough to be a career Republican at this point, can it? So what’s possibly in it for them to believe in absolutely nothing and have no discernible purpose to anything they do?
In Wire parlance, I wonder what it’s like to live in a real country.
You’ve never seen fruitless negotiations, have you?
They try this possibility, that possibility…
With the federal government there are 2 million possibilities of people to lay off, 3080 possibilities of counties to hurt, hundred of programs, thousands of initiative, hundreds of thousands of contracts. If you really get down in the weeds, you could probably keep it going for a year or two.
And there are hundred of ways to try to push the opponent across their bottom line. And Obama’s bottom line seems to be: let’s cut a deal and cut out this crap until after the 2012 election. And the GOP’s bottom line is: we want to harass Obama with “tax and spend” and “raised the debt” until he is a one-term President.
It took two months to get clear on that. And now here we are waiting for one side or the other to blink. And finally the bankers are getting nervous instead of thinking what a great way to undo financial industry reform.
Oh, yes, this same thing is going on in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and now probably Italy as well.
What’s the point of having all those networks of think tanks if they can’t be called upon to deliver reduced spending proposals on the fly?
I’m so tired of this kabuki farce bullshit. If anybody were actually serious about “cutting spending responsibly in a bipartisan fashion” (which they aren’t), you’d lock Paul Ryan in a room with the OMB and let them hash it out. At least they would come up with a plan with real numbers, and not wild-eyed aspirations meant to scare the other side into capitulation. It’d be a shitty plan, no doubt, with Ryan involved, but at least we’d know what the fuck was going on.
I’m to the point where I’m ready to see the dissolution of democracy. Barack Obama can be dictator-for-life. We’d be better off for it.
We’ve had the dissolution of democracy for some time now. Citizens United was the coup de grace.
If you are tired of kabuki farce bullshit, don’t watch politics, even on the local level.
The deals are always done behind the scenes, with the public events reduced to posturing.
Paul Ryan wouldn’t know a real number if it fell on him.
The real numbers get put in the legislation.
On a debt ceiling increase, there is only one real number–the amount of the increased debt ceiling.
And even that isn’t real because it is the tax laws and the appropriations that determine the needed debt. If Congress wants to lower the debt, they can deal with the taxes and the appropriations.
But the only thing that Republicans have is kabuki posturing. When you are committed to not governing, that’s all you have in order to justify your paycheck.
I’m still trying to figure this move out. But I noticed it is a move that makes Grover Norquist somewhat satisfied.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/271731/norquist-time-force-obamas-hand-andrew-stiles
The move is what the GOP always do….when the time comes to make a policy decision..wipe the slate clean and start over.
I think because establishment GOP doesn’t have any interest in governing, and their approach to holding onto power is just this superficial highly effective and cynical message-control which also fascinates some on the left. They think they can control the news cycles with this, or at least they can do damage control this way, so their brand stays alive through this disaster Obama has cornered them into.
It’s the best they can do to live another day to cynically manipulate Americans into thinking they’re serious about deficit reduction while they rob the treasury for the rich. That, as Booman has pointed out, is the point of their game, which the freshmen hothead ideologues don’t yet understand.
It reminds me of the purported conversation between Premier Khrushchev with Che Guevara in which he offers to “die beautifully” with the rest of the Cuban people in a total nuclear stand off with the U.S., and Khruschchev explains that he does not want them to die beautifully. It’s almost like that with these narcissistic zealots who call themselves the Tea Party.
The lead on the NYT story: “The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, proposed allowing President Obama to raise the debt limit without prior approval from Congress.”
How do ya think that’s going to play with the GOP crazybase? Will the GOP further humiliate itself trying to walk this back? I can hardly wait.
Write that up as a repeal of the debt ceiling law and put it in front of them to vote on.
Say “Congress controls the debt through appropriations and tax laws. The debt ceiling law is pure theater.”
I hadn’t seen it that way, but it’s true, isn’t it — what McConnell proposed is in fact a temporary repeal of the debt ceiling law. Priceless.
“They can continue to grouse about the deficit.” But who will be listening and not completely laughing in their faces? They’ve exposed themselves as frauds to the American public when it comes to the deficit.
Yep.
And, Obama spent the last month solidifying his position as Mr. Reasonable, topped off with that little presser yesterday that was, in fact, a victory lap. Ooh, look at me! I’m so awesome and you know it! More in sadness than in anger, I ask why my very good friends across the aisle are a howling mass of roid-raging baboons in thrall to the sort of rich people who let their tiny dogs poop on your lawn after you just mowed it.
“I am kicking myself that I didn’t see this coming.”
I did!
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2011/7/11/144335/418/36#36
Although I thought it would come in the form of a “14th Amendment Option,” not a bill like this, but I’ve been talking about the Republicans making Obama raise the debt limit unilaterally so they can 1) make sure it gets raised and 2) not take any responsibility for raising it or for signing onto a deal that included concessions.
That is because I am a awesome. Brilliant. Brilliantly awesome.
While you, Booman…sigh…you scuttle around on all fours, hunched over, throwing your feces and communicating through a series of grunts.
😉
The President will take this deal, because he, unlike his adversaries and many of his progressive critics, is actually interested in governing, above and beyond politics.
Dude, do you have to be such a masshole? 😉
Hey! We Massholes have to live down to our reputations! Cut us some slack, willya?
LADY, LET’S GO, IT’S GREEN!
Give ya kid a binky when ya get home!
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!
In that sense I predicted it just as well as you did. Better in fact, because I did not predict the use of the 14th Amendment. What I didn’t see coming was this wickedly silly plan of McConnell’s to try to sell out his base, please business, and retain the right to keep his base riled up about a problem he created.
If only the teabaggers were a littler smarter, it wouldn’t work.
Sigh.
Hey, look over there! A Kenyan with no flag pin!
I’ll quote Armando, which sums up my feelings:
There is of course the FY 2012 appropriations bills, each of which can be held hostage for “a plan”.
Indeed, they’ll keep fighting.
But this was the biggest arrow in their quiver.
Twice now, they blinked on “shutting down the government” and settled for bupkiss.
They won’t do it. That’s done as a negotiation tactic.
I dunno about shutting down the government. The Tea Party crowd are pretty determined.
And in the August before World War I, everyone thought that no one would go to war. The were, you know, just rattling sabers.
Sometimes processes spin out of control.
Lawrence O’Donnell is cracking me up.tonight is another keeper.
Hey Republicans! How’s that paintin’ yourself into a corner workin’ out for ya?
I will admit, if this happens, this was pretty awesome rope-a-dope.
I particularly liked the “nope, no social security checks”, that was the icing on the cake.
I’m still angry about putting SS, Mcare and Mcaid on the table, but that was some serious judo. Especially if there’s a clean bill.
glad to have played a role in the kabuki chorus as well.
Obama still wants a deal. SS and Medicare might not be involved but you can bet that he will sign a $2 trillion deficit reduction bill if they give him one with some limited tax revenue increases.
I think he’d rather have a deal than a clean debt ceiling vote.
He chided McConnell:
“The president continues to believe that our focus must remain on seizing this unique opportunity to come to agreement on significant, balanced deficit reduction,” press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement on the McConnell plan. “As the president has said, `If not now, when?’ It is time for our leaders to find common ground and reduce our deficit in a way that will strengthen our economy.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58844.html#ixzz1RwsYO2AV
“I think he’d rather have a deal than a clean debt ceiling vote. “
well, if that’s the case he can blow me.
if that’s the case.
for now i am just in the moment: the republicans seem to have blinked, and that makes me happy.
if obama insists on cuts tomorrow, THEN I will get angry again.
start learning something, brendan.
If he talks about cuts tomorrow it’s because he doesn’t have a bill to sign yet. McConnell needs further pummeling and humiliation. And he needs to remember that Harry Reid is in charge of the Senate, too.
Level-headed analysis by me from on July 7th:
What did you get from the Firebaggers on that day? How instructive was it? Do you want to read puppets on a string? Do you want to be a puppet on a string?
i actually don’t read FDL all that much anymore. their near-constant crisis is as tiresome as your near-constant rose-colored view on the president.
the blogs I read daily are Susie Madrak, Atrios, Balloon-Juice, Greenwald, Kos, and TPM.
right now, I’m more concerned with finding work.
Well, this is all something. I’m going to try to keep more calm next time and work on my kabuki chorus parts.
work on my kabuki chorus parts
A-heh-hem!
“This is a slap in the face to me me me ME me me meeeeee.”
no, was a meant as a compliment to Brendan actually and a reminder to myself not to be too impatient during the kabuki process. this is a bfd as Joe Biden would say.
Hey, I was just practicing for the next chorus.
So McConnell’s just run up the white flag. Why should Obama take Turtleman’s crappy bit of political theater now, when with another turn or two of the screw he can probably get an entirely clean raising of the ceiling? You notice, in his presser PBO said clearly he’d veto any short-term stopgap measure that came to him.
This mess from McConnell has “booby trap” written all over it. Obama’s way too smart to fall for it.
.
A review on political positions just a few months ago, only urgency has changed!
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."