Last night, twelve Republican senators dined with the president at the White House. The dinner was organized by Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who the White House thanked after the dinner was over. The attendees, in addition to Isakson, were Marco Rubio (Fla.), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), John Boozman (Ark.), Susan Collins (Maine), Mike Enzi (Wyo.), Deb Fischer (Neb.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Pat Roberts (Kan.), John Thune (S.D.) and Roger Wicker (Miss.).
The senators discussed the budget, immigration, and gun control.
“Productive discussion tonight at dinner with the President and GOP colleagues,” Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) tweeted Wednesday night.
Karen Tumulty and Paul Kane, wonder if there has been a thaw in relations between the two parties in Washington.
We shouldn’t exaggerate signs of progress, but it’s clear that the president is making some progress with the Senate. It looks increasingly likely that the Senate will have votes and pass legislation on guns and immigration, and the path is now clear for some kind of Grand Bargain on the budget.
Cynics are insisting that none of this will matter because the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will still block any progress, but I am not sure that is true. They are still behaving as if they intend to take some action on guns and immigration. And if there is movement in the Senate on a budget agreement, I think the House will react to that as well.
Rhetoric aside, the past may not be the best prelude for predicting what will happen in this Congress.
There is not going to be a Grand Bargain (and probably just as well), and the Senate is irrelevant- it’s the House Teabaggers that are the roadblock. In any case Grand Bargains are a foolish thing to aim for, since their terms cannot bind future Congresses.
As long as the House is controlled by the Teapublicans, we will continue to have constant government-by-crisis. The only hope for sanity is the slim chance of retaking the House in 2014. It is, to put it mildly, not very helpful for the President to keep tossing anvils to Democratic candidates on issues like Social Security, all in the pursuit of the delusion of a Grand Bargain. You are supporting really dumb politics with this stuff. You really should read what Markos Moulitsas has been writing and make more effort to comprehend it.
The Senate is many things, but it is not irrelevant.
The Senate may be relevant, but senators like this dinner crowd are rapidly losing influence to the Senate’s Take No Prisoners Coalition — Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, etc. Maybe they won’t get their gun filibuster, but wait till 2015, when newly elected teabaggers have replaced Saxby Chambliss and quite possibly Lindsey Graham and who knows who else.
Meh. Chances aren’t bad that we’ll hold that Georgia seat after the 2014 elections. They are going to run a real mouth-breather and their margins in Georgia are already narrower than they seem to realize.
Any twelve republican Senators can have immense influence, particularly when they allow 56 Democrats and Independents to do something that the American public wants.
Oh, and I agree with Steve L — there isn’t going to be a grand bargain, and frankly, I don’t think a grand bargain can even pass the Senate, because no GOP senator up for reelection (or, more to the point, renomination) as the state party’s candidate) in 2014 will dare vote for a tax increase on anyone.
I believe you are wrong about this. Couched as tax reform, there is support from a wide swath of the Senate. They wouldn’t move on it because they made the assumption that Obama was just posturing. Their demand for evidence that he wasn’t just posturing is why Chained CPI showed up in the budget.
What evidence did Obama demand in turn that the Republicans weren’t posturing? What’s the basis for your confidence that this brand-breaking budget will actually work?
Basically, the fact that the sequester is a disaster has not gone away. It has merely become a subterranean issue. As the president meets with these Republican senators, they are plotting together to overcome TeaBag resistance to fixing the sequester. Some Republicans want a fix for defense spending. Others want to do the bidding of the Chamber of Commerce or Wall Street. Others have agricultural concerns. But they also want cover. They want to president to take heat. They want to drive a wedge into the Democratic Party. They want to mute the damage they’ll take over Chained CPI and Medicare cuts. So, this is a dance that the Senate GOP will make with the president. The entire point is to get to a deal.
Okay, sounds like a plan. How does it play out? To thwart the Republicans driving a wedge through our party, progressives will en masse need to support the budget as being the best deal possible. The President will nobly take the hit for the Democrats, but not in a way that spreads to the party in general (how?). The Republicans should balk if Obama tries to make them take the hit for the entitlement cuts, so he’ll have to restrain his partisan attacks (into the campaign season?). Teabaggers will primary these Republican Senators, presumably, driving them to the right on other issues (?). But it’s the progressive organizations and bloggers that we have to worry about, throwing a wrench into the whole plan by whipping up opposition to third-rail politics. How do we keep them with the program without making them look like sellouts to their supporters?
What probably needs to happen is that a bloc of Republicans in the Senate will step out and start praising the president for standing up to his party (look for Coburn, McCain, Graham). On the left, senators like Sanders, Brown, Warren, Merkley will scream and stomp. Meanwhile, leadership like Durbin and Murray will enter negotiations. The GOP will turn off the scream-machine long enough to massage a new message about Obama’s move to the middle, a la Clinton. Progressives will lose their minds, providing more cover. And, in the end, a highly unsatisfying deal will be made that will turn off the sequester and reposition the GOP back in the good graces of the business community and Pentagon.
Thanks for spelling this out. I’ll know what to look for now from the politicians. I only want to observe that in the entire game play, the only role for the progressives or even the public in general is as cover, or pawns, so to speak. You have a lot of expertise about what happens in Washington, (really impressive at the individual level too) so it’s natural to pay more attention to that. But there’s a chance that you’re underestimating the long-term electoral consequences of the outline above. And if I accept the plan as you describe, I wonder if we can both agree that the public has no real Democratic role in the scene as you game it out, even regarding a position that a vast majority of the public opposes.
Ironically, the GOP’s professed policies are deeply unpopular, yet they insist on them. And then they need cover for them from the president. On the other hand, the president’s policies are a non-starter from the GOP base, so they must be snuck in under the cover of capitulation.
You heard it here first; kicking kids so seniors who can draw $50k a year out of their savings can get an extra $45 a year in SS is great politics.
Oh, we all can play this game. Kicking kids so environmentalists can save an owl. Kicking kids so college students can go on Spring Break with guaranteed loans. Kicking kids so illegal immigrants can go to our public schools.
As soon as you started down that road, you showed us one of the insidious consequences of the President’s budget.
Look at that list. Except for Rubio, most are either back-benchers or Bush-Cheney Republicans.
If there is a Grand Bargain on the budget, what will happen is that folks like Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders will filibuster it because of the cuts to Social Security and the failure of meaningful increases in revenue. If there is a large enough group of Democrats filibustering, Reid will use this opportunity to do filbuster reform to serve the President’s agenda for a Grand Bargain.
The fact that the hippies have been punched will permit Boehner to get enough House Republicans to vote with New Democrats for the resulting deal.
I don’t think there will be enough Democrats in the Senate opposing a Grand Bargain to cause Reid to have to blow up the filibuster. Therefore, Republicans will get acceptance of the principle of entitlement cuts without giving up their “no new taxes” stand and can go back to extortion.
The President will get what he wants. Emphasis on “what he wants”.
And in 2014, Democrats will have to dodge accusations that they stabbed seniors in the back–accusastion that will have credibility because of the the Grand Bargain. Remember in 2010 all it took to make voters think the GOP was the defenders of Medicare (that turned Wisconsin, Florida, and Michigan) was the notion of Obamacare saving $700 billion in Medicare expenses. It doesn’t have to be true for the Republicans to demagogue it–just credible to independents. And of course the media gives the GOP a pass on their hypocrisy and demagoguery.
BTW, nice little hit job Politico did on the White House (staff) yesterday–or was that a pathetic attempt at spin from the White House.
Shows how little you know. Wicker is mentored by Cochran, who is a classic appropriator. Hatch is hardly a backbencher, and he has a fresh term. Thune and Enzi are conservative, but they are legislators. Enzi is not a backbencher, either, having helped craft ObamaCare despite his ultimate opposition.
Others on the list like Pat Roberts and Deb Fischer, are approachable on agricultural issues that the sequester is devastating.
Obviously, Susan Collins is a classic moderate whose support is gettable on almost any issue up for debate right now.
The house GOP cannot vote for tax increases. The house progressives can’t vote for chained CPI. It’s all dead in the water.
In any case, it doesn’t matter if the dems do anything to hurt social security or not – they will still be accused of doing so in the campaign ads. Even if obama’s proposal had never happened, I can assure you the GOP would have gone heavily on dems threatening medicare and social security, because those are the GOP’s biggest areas of weakness. The GOP always attacks the dems by projection.
Most seniors didn’t vote for Obama. It doesn’t matter quite so much if they get riled up about Social Security and Medicare — their own party demanded that these be put on the chopping block.
Obama knows how to say this, and to say to his younger votes, “Democrats are saving these programs so they’ll still be around when you need them.” Good news to most of his young supporters, who haven’t believed that yet.
The budget is a mixed bag (as it would have to be). There are even some amazing wonderful elements to it in addition to the crap. The structure of our system isn’t like a parliament. We can’t get squat done without compromise. A number of legislators on both sides need ample coverage and the only coverage that works is some kind of absurd, bizarre dance – and for these times that means taking the kabuki to new levels of absurdity. I like your comment from your previous article:
This dance is dedicated to you Booman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W66miUV7Whk
So Greg Walden, congressman from Oregon and head dude of NRCC, blasts chanined cpi as an “assault on seniors”. This shameless hypocrisy will give all Dems a big heads up on what’s at stake. How many Dems in the House will support a budget that includes chained cpi? Not a majority I bet. And if the deal includes more revenues, how many R’s support it? Not much to like in the “grand bargain”. As more boomers retire, the more difficult the fiscal pressures become. So seems like some things have to give. But chained cpi is not an insignificant hit on seniors. Ezra Klein:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/11/heres-what-chained-cpi-really-means-up-to
-849-less-for-someone-who-retired-in-2001/
You know, all you really have to do to understand the politics is to watch the Dems who (unlike Obama) are actually going to have to run for re-election distancing themselves from this budget as fast as they can. BooMan may not get it but they sure do.
We don’t know whether there will be a really significant lingering effect by the 2014 election season, but given that re-taking the House will be a very steep uphill climb in any case, any avoidable drag on that effort needs to be avoided.
You are endorsing a permanent sequester on the basis of the slim hope that we’ll be in a better position two years from now.
I’m not endorsing anything. I’m trying to get you to deal with reality.
Echoes of the fantasy invasion/occupation of Iraq that many self-identified liberals concocted to cheer on the Bush/Cheney war madness.
What if the economy lumbers forward and last month’s job numbers are just a temporary dip? Sequester effects depend on the economic makeup of districts and may not be broadly felt. Where is the support for chained cpi to replace those effects? Even if R’s sign off on revenue increases, how does that play politically versus SS benefit cuts? Wise policy would take an entirely different path, and the political advantage of rallying against benefit cuts has a long history.
you’re still focused on optics and political positioning. The president intends to pass a gun bill, an immigration bill, and sequester-replacement bill. He is not posturing.
You’re still focused on your elaborate fantasy life. None of those things will happen unless we can win back the House. Every time Obama throws 2014 Dem candidates a boat anchor, that becomes less likely.
they will all happen, this year.
I’ll quote you on that when the House passes nothing or at most, meaningless symbolic bills with even less content than the already lame Senate versions.
Well, I don’t even know what that means for immigration reform, but on guns, yeah, all we’re going to get is the Manchin-Toomey thing. Perhaps the Senate can do a little more than that, but not the House.
And this is the point. Largely meaningless bits of Clintonesque micro-legislation with impressive-sounding titles are simply not worth sacrificing anything else (politically or substantively) for. And it’s no sure thing that we’ll get even that much. In the current situation there is little point at aiming for anything more than preventing actual government shutdowns, and much to lose from risky strategies for trying to get anything more than that.
Demands for Liberal Purity or Bust are not the way to get legislation through Congress and move the country forward on these issues. Never have been, never will be.
Getting Potemkin “legislation”, that actually accomplishes almost nothing (like Manchin’s “compromise” that reduces the loopholes from 50 feet wide to 48 feet wide), through Congress, is not a worthwhile goal for politics of any kind, liberal, conservative, or anything in between. And when matters of actual substance are sacrificed in the process, that’s even worse. Politics is the art of the possible, and right now anything other than holding a defensive position is not possible. Obama may want to up his bills-passed count for the sake of his “legacy”, but the rest of us needn’t, and shouldn’t, care.
I agree that Obama’s efforts at accomodation with R’s have effects beyond the fiscal area. Just look at what got done in the lame duck after 2010. By agreeing to continue the Bush tax cuts for two years, more stimulus, ratification of Start II, and repeal of DADT got approved. So the passing of those issues may well hinge on his outreach. But one should not underestimate R’s shameless politicization of benefit cuts. That the administration is not enthusiastic about it’s proposals tells you something about the politics of them. Will they help in 2014? No. And they know that their agenda beyond 2014 to a large degree depends on the results of those elections.
So is this a list of the current non-lunatic senate Repubs? Teaman Rubio? Craypo? Pretty short list.
And no McRube! Oh how far the Great Maverick has fallen! So bitter he can’t get invited to the Serious Maverick Repubs dinner, haha.
Great post and thread yesterday, thanks to all (with minor exceptions) for the compelling insights and arguments. Whatever results from Obama’s CPI budget gambit, there’s no doubt it was an intentional Crossing of the Rubicon by Obama. Was it discussed with Reid and Pelosi and other Dems beforehand? Or made solely with Axelrod’s WH?
The great chief of the German General Staff FM Helmuth von Moltke observed that no plan ever survives the first engagement with the enemy, and of course a lot of thought went into Obama’s Gambit. I place myself in the political malpractice camp on it, but whatever happens it likely won’t turn out however Axelrod gamed it out on the flow chart.
As Booman’s latest “strange allies” post shows, this issue can’t really be fully calculated, too many moving parts. It seems hard to believe that many Dems will ever vote for it if indeed it could ever be maneuvered into an actual bill before the House. But how could there ever be a “successful” endgame for the Gambit without that? Nor can it be imagined as some political benefit for them in their quest for Speaker Pelosi. Of course, the resulting split in the party had to be on Axelrod’s flow chart or that was malpractice as well.