It's mind-blowing to me that people like John Boehner, who has been in Congress a long time and should understand how things work, get played for fools as easily as they do. But they do. It's the nature of the game when, instead of using the power the voters gave you, you choose instead to "negotiate deals" with people who can't be trusted to keep their word.
I cringed in 2011 when it was announced that Obama and House Republicans had reached a 10-year deal on spending, because one thing was absolutely guaranteed: The spending limits in the deal meant absolutely nothing. For one thing, no Congress can bind a future Congress to spending restraints. Any Congress can authorize whatever spending it wants. For another thing, Democrats who promise to limit spending in the future have no intention of doing so. Ever.
These 10-year deals are announced to make it look like serious deficit reduction is being achieved. When you hear that Congress just cut the deficit $4 trillion, it sounds significant until you realize a) it's over 10 years; and b) they're not actually going to do it.
So it is that the 2011 budget deal vaporizes, with Obama and Democrats demanding that the federal government lay out $1.058 trillion in discretionary spending next year - $91 billion more than the 2011 deal permits. Why? Because they can, that's why, and because there is nothing about the 2011 deal that binds them. Just because they agreed to it doesn't mean they have to do it, sillies. And if you were them, you probably wouldn't either, since you know Boehner will dutifully head into "negotiations" in which he will get rolled, rather than use the power of the purse he has as leader of the House majority and refuse to authorize any federal spending beyond what is necessary and appropriate given the nation's fiscal situation.
Now granted, as Karl Rove pontificates in today's Wall Street Journal, that is exactly what Obama is trying to bait Boehner into doing. He loves government shutdown showdowns, because they give Democrats the opportunity to preen for the media with stories about national parks closing, senior citizens eating dog food and soldiers marching in the mud without shoes. But this only works because Republicans play this hand so poorly, mainly out of fear that they'll get destroyed by the media.
And they will, but that will happen with anything they do. They still haven't figured out that trying to please the media is a fool's game, every bit the same as entering into negotiations with Obama and making a long-term spending deal. All Obama has to do to justify welching on the deal is spew some blather about the middle class, attack the "wealthiest 1 percent" or whatever, and he will immediately immunize himself against all media criticism for breaking his promise.
Thus Boehner will head back into "budget talks" as if there was not already an agreement in place. Because in reality, there isn't. The 2011 deal never meant anything.
The stance House Republicans should take is this: Mr. President, you may want to spend $3.7 trillion next year, but the Constitution says the House has the power of the purse, and the House will approve only so much spending and no more. If you want to veto the spending authorization we're giving you, and the government shuts down as a result, that's on you.
Of course, the House GOP should have done this as soon as it gained majority status in 2011. Instead, it tried to use the debt ceiling as leverage in negotiations on some long-term deal, and all it got from that was a political bludgeoning and a "deal" that meant nothing.
For all the talk about how Senate Democrats have refused to pass budgets since 2009, Boehner has enabled them by going along with the continuing resolutions that have authorized funding of government operations in lieu of real budgets. These continuing resolutions could not become law if the House did not vote for them. Boehner could refuse and insist on a normal order budget or nothing, but he refuses to use his power to do so.
Now that Obama is predictably welching on the 2011 deal, do you seriously think Republicans will be able to make any political hay out of it? Voters really don't care about the details of some deal from two years ago. They care about whether anyone will actually do what's necessary to solve the nation's economic and fiscal problems. The House GOP has the power to at least make an impact on out-of-control spending by refusing to authorize it. But since 2011, Boehner and his House colleagues have refused to use that power, choosing instead to enter into fruitless negotiations that result in long-term "deals" Obama simply ignores in favor of ever-more spending. And the whole sorry thing repeats itself.
Conservatives are now hopeful of taking control of the Senate while keeping the House in 2014. I don't know why. What's the point of giving Republicans power in Washington when they refuse to use it?
