The Great Debate

Fiscal crisis? What fiscal crisis? The stock market is up, unemployment is down and the deficit is shrinking.

The fiscal crisis is in Washington, and it’s a crisis of Washington’s own devising. All those deadlines! January 1: the fiscal cliff. March 1: sequesters. March 27: a possible government shutdown. Sometime in August:  the debt ceiling, again.

The unending fiscal crisis could take up the entire year. President Barack Obama desperately wants to end it. For one thing, more spending cuts could bring on a recession. For another, an unending fiscal crisis would monopolize the agenda. No time for Congress to take up immigration reform or gun control or the minimum wage or preschool education.

What can Obama do? Here are the options:

1. The permanent campaign

Beginning in mid-February, the president tried to rally the public against the impending sequesters. He barnstormed the country, warning of the consequences and imploring voters to pressure Congress to resolve the impasse.

It didn’t work. Most voters had no idea what a sequester was. The cuts are not happening all at once, like a government shutdown. The public is also OK with across-the-board spending cuts (by a 2-to-1 margin in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll). Just don’t cut any specific programs.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is now in Williamsburg, Virginia, meeting with his House Republican conference at their annual retreat. The GOP House members have likely gotten over the initial shock of the November elections – in which President Barack Obama won more than 51 percent of the vote and the Democratic majority swelled in the Senate.

Though the Republicans lost House seats and their candidates collected more than a million fewer votes than their Democratic rivals, the GOP retained a majority in the House of Representatives. This consolation prize has allowed Boehner to claim that House Republicans have a mandate every bit as compelling as that earned by the president. Conservative champions Grover Norquist and Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) echoed this claim.

“It’s very wrong to suggest that only the president has a mandate,” asserted former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who knows from congressional mandates. “The House Republicans also have a mandate, and it’s a much more conservative mandate than the president’s.”

It is never acceptable for elected officials to put partisan politics and special-interest pledges ahead of their country. But when the stakes are great, as they are with the fiscal cliff negotiations, it is reprehensible.

People who talk about the political benefits of heading off the cliff need to have their heads examined. The blunt ax of massive spending cuts, along with huge across-the-board tax increases, would be irresponsible, possibly triggering another recession. It’s offensive for some Democrats and Republicans to suggest their party could “win” under this scenario, since the country and the American people would be sure losers.

Both parties say they want a deal. The key question is whether they will resist their respective wings, special-interest pressures and short-term political considerations to achieve one.

One of the ironies of America politics is that the House of Representatives, designed to be the “mob” of political power, is the top-down, well-run branch of government, and the Senate is the every man for himself body. Unlike the Majority Leader of the Senate, the Speaker has immense sway over the House and can, when necessary, bend it to her will.

With that type of power, it’s not surprising that its leaders have to ward off intra-party threats to their power. In John Barry’s The Ambition and the Power, Barry compares overthrowing a Speaker or Minority Leader to Regicide. And, though unlikely, both sides of the aisle are talking about just such an event.

Pelosi may be forced to, or even want to step down if her party loses the House. Even if the Democrats win, numerous Blue Dogs have intimated in the campaign that they will not vote for her (Heath Schuler claimed that he will run against her if no one else does). Others have talked about electing a whole new House team for the Democrats.