July 13, 2011 in News, Nation/World

Leaders lack followers to resolve debt showdown

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Associated Press photo

President Barack Obama meets with Congressional leaders regarding the debt ceiling Wednesday in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington. Clockwise, from left are, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va., House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif., House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, the president, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin of Ill., Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Ariz., Budget Director Jack Lew, Vice President Joe Biden, White House Chief of Staff William Daley, and National Economic Council director Gene Sperling.
(Full-size photo)

WASHINGTON — It was a startling admission from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor: “Nothing can get through the House right now. Nothing.”

For President Barack Obama and congressional leaders, the debate over raising the nation’s debt ceiling has provided a stark lesson on the limits of their power. Each of their proposals to lift the limit, cut the deficit and allow the government to pay its bills sank before their troops had a real chance to weigh in.

What’s left is an assortment of contingencies and increasingly sour squabbling between intraparty factions deeply split over what to do as an Aug. 2 deadline ticks closer. No proposal has the critical mass to raise the limit and avoid default. The lack of clarity about just who is leading — and to where — has taken its toll in goodwill and trust.

That has liberated all sides from any urge to follow their leaders, freeing them to propose and oppose whatever they want on an issue that could frame the nation’s economic fate and send ripples around the world for years.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, for example, felt free to issue Obama an ultimatum on government entitlements. Democrats, she said, will not vote for any cuts to Medicare or Social Security benefits, including raising the eligibility age for the former and reducing the size of annual cost of living increases for the latter. Obama was willing to consider those actions, but only if Republican leaders would agree to raising taxes. Rank-and-file lawmakers in both parties balked.

The leadership lag is even more visible in Republican ranks.

Some conservatives, in fact, are publicly dismissing their leaders’ warnings that a first-ever default on the U.S. debt could mean disaster, even plunge the country into another recession.

“That’s just not true,” Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Republican and GOP presidential candidate, told reporters Wednesday. The government, she added, is collecting plenty of tax revenue to pay the interest on the debt, which she said would prevent a default on U.S. Treasury bonds.

Her contribution to the debate: a bill to guarantee that even during a default, military personnel and interest on the debt would be paid, ahead of Social Security benefits or civilian federal workers’ salaries. Republican leaders, from House Speaker John Boehner down, did not pile behind it.

“I would say to the speaker: ‘Excuse me for trying to lead,’” said the Bachmann bill’s co-sponsor. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.

It was a snarky reference to Boehner’s own words during testy meetings with Obama this week, as the two sides try to find some path forward under an increasingly urgent deadline. They’re finding that it’s hard to lead without a decisive following. None of the proposals, big or small, has produced one.

The $4 trillion “big deal” that Boehner and Obama explored for days, sometimes in secret, didn’t survive the weekend. Convinced that it wouldn’t pass the House, Boehner abandoned it Saturday night in an email some Republicans said they received when it was made public.

Discussion then centered on a smaller version. But during Monday’s White House meeting, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was galled by that plan’s apparent cuts of only $2 billion upfront and began speaking of the prospects for a deal in the past tense. He presented what he described as an option of last resort that would give Obama authority — and saddle him with the blame — for raising the debt ceiling unless Congress objected.

Many conservatives didn’t like that either, saying Republicans would be passing up a golden opportunity to use the necessity to avoid a default to force spending cuts totaling trillions of dollars over the next decade and reduce the government’s size.

“This is our chance,” said Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. “We finally have the leverage to get the changes we need.”

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Four comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  ChefGus/ John Olsen on July 13 at 5:33 p.m.

  “This is our chance,” said Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. “We finally have the leverage to get the changes we need.”

  Jeff Flake?? Really?? :)) j

• 

  mikeln on July 13 at 5:48 p.m.

  They could raise the debt limit and take care of the other buisness at a later date. This is nothing more then more fear to take our minds off the fact that corporate has taken over and the american future looks bleak, at best. Hope everyone stocked up, could be a long winter. We sure need a way to vote the entire government out when they become so corrupt a skunk cannot stand the smell.

• 

  crazyivan44 on July 13 at 7:22 p.m.

  I view it as it is going to have to be dealt with at some point, whether it is political that the line is drawn in the sand now instead of raising a temp limit or not at least it is possibly heading for a showdown…no more band-aids.

• 

  RedCedar on July 13 at 7:33 p.m.

  The way I see it, both sides are like a bunch of spoiled children who can’t stand to be ignored. It’s the middle of the summer. Most normal people are thinking about some pleasant combination of sunshine, beaches, getting laid, road trips, getting drunk, fishing, camping, and outdoor concerts. They’re not paying a lot of attention to what the congresscritters are doing. The congresscritters know it, and it bugs the hell out of them. Thus, the increasingly shrill rhetoric, grandstanding, and pseudo-brinksmanship, aided by a few breathless reporters who have been told to try to do whatever they can to turn this rather lame “debt ceiling” script into something that will keep everyone glued to their TV for the latest word from Washington. Good luck with that.

  The fact is, even if the congresscritters do absolutely nothing, life will continue pretty much as it always has. Look at how long California has been in a “budget crisis”, and they don’t even have the ability to print money out of air. The bureaucracy pretty well runs itself at this point. In the absence of a budget, there will be no default. Bondholders will get paid first. If there really and truly is a money shortage so serious that no amount of clever accounting can hide it, the bookkeepers will first take up all the slack they can get, which is quite a lot, by not paying anyone (vendors or employees) a day sooner than they have to. Maybe eventually they’d have to tell some vendors to wait 90 days. Businesses do this all the time when they have cash flow issues.

  If the government did it, it would be look like a huge disaster, even though it wouldn’t really be. By then it would be autumn, everybody would be sobered up and back to work, and the serious money men on Wall Street would tell the congresscritters just what’s what. At that point, we get the “historic bipartisan compromise”, and “tough but necessary choices” speeches. The debt ceiling gets raised, trillions in cuts are announced, but they’re only cuts from the projected rate of increase, and it’s business as usual in D.C.