Boehner almost compromises...then turns tail and runs

House Speaker John Boehner and President Obama have been meeting in an attempt to forge the Grand Bargain—a budget deal that would at long last reverse the nation’s terrifying trajectory toward economic oblivion.

But on July 9^th, Boehner pulled the plug on the talks.  He abandoned the high ground that could have led to the kind of a budget deal with the President that is so desperately necessary.  Instead he capitulated to those in the Tea Party whose idea of how to move America forward is so simplistically ignorant as to not be worthy of serious discussion.

Be careful before you rush to the barricades in fury or to the ramparts in exultation.  Those who read this space regularly know well that I am no Obama booster, including the way in which he initially ignored the report of his own Debt and Deficit Commission chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. 

But at last, at long last, President Obama has come to the party.  His talks with Speaker Boehner were intended to do what needs to be done, if America is to avert economic Armageddon.  They were attempting to agree on a ten-year program to cut $4 trillion out of Government expenditures.  It’s what Bowles/Simpson had recommended.

The only way to do that responsibly is to cut spending, reform the major entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, reduce Defense Spending, reform and rewrite the income tax code for individuals and corporation AND increase taxes.  Did you note the word, “AND”?

This prescription creates political pain for everybody—Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and the erstwhile Tea Party. That pain is the inevitable cost of decades of their having kicked the can down the road, using our addictive acquiescence as their excuse.

But now Boehner has cut and run.  He’s turned his back on the nation’s urgent need for what he wrongly believes is political advantage.  He’s chosen to protect his backside and his job as Speaker rather than do what’s right for the nation.  It’s clear that the Tea party folks believe this issue will oust Obama and propel them to victory in 2012.  They’re wrong.

When the Grand Bargain that the President and he were attempting to create fails as a consequence of Boehner’s cowardice, the President and the Democrats will ride that horse to victory in 2012.  They will do it by turning out their base and winning most of the crucial block of Independent voters who are appalled at the intransigence and naiveté of the Tea Party.

And the talk’s collapse could have been avoided.  The Grand Bargain covers ten years. Both sides could have agreed to delay the tax increases and the entitlement reductions, which are the incendiary portions of the deal, until the economy had emerged from its doldrums.  This could have been accomplished with “triggers” in the agreement based on the timing of economic recovery.

There are times when patriotism and selflessness require one to put their own and their Party’s hide on the line.  When that time came for Speaker Boehner, he turned tail and ran. 

LeRoy Goldman       

July 11, 2011

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