Smart people understand that Ted Cruz’s antics are working against the Republicans by allowing Harry Reid to delay the passage of a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government to the very last moment, leaving John Boehner with a take-it-or-leave-it dilemma. But there is also a potential downside to letting everything go to the last minute. If the House Republicans are smart and somewhat restrained, they could approve the Senate’s CR but attach approval of the Keystone XL pipeline to it and force the Senate into a take-it-or-leave-it situation. There are enough pro-energy Democrats, like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Tim Johnson of South Dakota, that such a provision could pass the Senate. And then the president would be in the position of having to veto the CR and allow a government shutdown or acceding to the Keystone demand and cutting the State Department’s deliberative process off at the knees.
The president might not mind a brief government shutdown that is unambiguously the Republicans’ responsibility and that is understood to be about their opposition to the Affordable Care Act. He’d be much less happy with a shutdown that is understood to be about his refusal to approve the Keystone pipeline.
But I said that the Republicans would have to be restrained in order for this plan to work. If they limited their demands to the pipeline, they might be able to jam up the president. But the rumors that have been circulating have said that they want to attach the Keystone demand to the debt ceiling, and that they want Medicare and tax reforms as part of the package. Boehner is fishing for votes, and the Keystone provision may be insufficient, by itself, to get Boehner the majority he needs. In any case, he’d have to attach it to the CR, not the debt ceiling, in order for this gambit to work.
Still, it’s something to be mindful of as we come down to the wire.
Could he let the pipeline approval through and then work against it in other ways – for example, using the ongoing sequester to keep funding away from things related to the pipeline, or working with democrats to keep key items in future budgets away from it, delaying until a democratic majority can take over?
Not a great option, but faced with the scenario you describe, he’d have no choice but to sign the bill. The democrats would never live past it if he didn’t. It would be game over. Sadly the majority of americans know jack shit about keystone or why it is so unusually bad.
As I understand it, the Keystone XL project needs approval from the State Department because it crosses our border. But it isn’t a government-funded project. The administration can refuse, in effect, to issue a license to build it, but they can’t withhold funding because they aren’t funding it.
They could not find the money for inspectors (hehe, there I go, assuming the keystone debacle will actually be “inspected”…)
Keystone X and chained CPI. Since he wants one and half-way wants the other. Nice cover. Then DNC types can whine that the hippies stayed away again in 2014. The perfect excuse. Will we ever get a change in plot???
How long have you been watching this president?
Does it ever occur to you that he might “want” Chained CPI about as much as he “wanted” to bomb Syria?
That it might be something he would do in a pinch, but that he offers to do in order to advance a different priority?
Sure but we don’t believe he’s bluffing. I believe he didn’t want to bomb Syria, but he would have done it. Same with chained CPI. I believe he’d enact it if a bill came to his desk. Actually, I think he thinks chained CPI is good on the merits.
I don’t think he thinks it is good on the merits. I think he, correctly, sees it as the least damaging concession he can make, and as something he will inevitably have to give away if he is ever to make any deal whatsoever with the Republicans.
… he, correctly, sees it as the least damaging concession he can make..
Oh, really? When jaundiced eyes have been looking at our 2.5% growth and saying it is all inflation. Does the official 1.8% inflation seem credible to you?
By one rather amusing metric…In 1986 a Big Mac cost $2.36 dollars. Today that cost has risen to $4.33 but if the price had only risen as much as the official CPI the same Big Mac would only cost $3.49.
CPI avoids the nittty-gritty price of essentials already.
I understand how Chained CPI works and why it would be a reduction in Social Security benefits over time.
I’m not talking up Chained CPI as good policy.
I’m saying that it’s pretty much a no-brainer as the first thing to offer in any compromise because you don’t want to raise the retirement age, you don’t want to means test, you don’t want to directly cut benefits, and you actually want to expand the cut-off, not decrease it.
So, what can you offer? You offer Chained CPI and then put in resets for people who live for more than twenty years on Social Security.
It’s a perfectly reasonable concession, and it is by far much less painful than any other concession I can think of.
If you want to criticize him for putting it on the table prematurely, I can understand that argument. But if you are arguing that we could shore up Social Security’s long-term financing in a deal with the Republicans that would involve anything preferable to Chained CPI, then your just not being honest.
Well, how about fixing it with Social Security taxes on investment income???? No one expects any attempt from this Congress to enact anything comprehensive on tax reform, for god’s sake. This would be a one-off gift to them for an unconnected matter–keeping the government open.
Two things on that.
It’s also important to avoid means-testing Social Security because we need the broadest possible political support from the program, so we need somewhat wealthy people to believe it’s a fair deal for them. If we start taking away their benefit because we think that they don’t need it, they will respond by attacking the program for the people who do need it.
Uh, that was hyperbole. And we absolutely could make SS solvent with tweaks to the cut-off income and including all forms of income as taxable, not just wages. Do I imagine this is going to happen before Oct 17th??? Or with this House??? No. I was being sour. Imagining what form the “cave” would take. Like Brer Rabbit…Oh, please, don’t make me chain the CPI, Republicans. Or OK the Keystone X.
I am sour. And sick of being played.
Forget prematurely. It shouldn’t be on the table at all. If they want a grand bargain then let them do it with their majorities and if they can ever win the presidency.
This idea that the president should not just refuse to make a deal with the Republicans but he shouldn’t even make a pretense of making a deal with the Republicans is just absolutist purist bullshit that takes no account of how you win political battles.
Your idea is that the president should have taken all the political heat that was immolating his administration and chances for reelection, and he should have just argued that the debt is not a problem and he isn’t concerned about it and he isn’t going to even talk about it and he has not one idea for how to address our long-term debt obligations.
He never should have even entered into discussions with John Boehner over a Grand Bargain, and he would have totally have gotten away with that and won reelection in a walk.
I mean, that’s just completely delusional.
I don’t think his Grand Bargain highjinks had anything to do with his re-election. Those proposals were very unpopular at the time. And sequester has been such a resounding success–if people had only known what he had in store for them.
Occupy and Mittens 47% handed him a theme that moved the dial finally. And his GOTV.
Well, then, I’d estimate that you know next to nothing about electoral politics.
The 2010 midterms were an epochal smackdown for the Democratic Party that absolutely gave the Republicans a mandate to tackle the debt.
The idea that the president didn’t feel it was a threat to his reelection is only slightly more delusional than the idea that it wasn’t, in fact, a threat to his reelection.
The idea that he could have plausibly responded to the 2010 midterm election results by ignoring them and gone on to survive is ridiculous.
Just tell me what Social Security has to do with the deficit or the National Debt, Booman.
Listen to a PBS segment. It gives you both sides of the argument.
It’s a Trust. It is prevented by law from any other funding stream than its own contributions. Its government bonds are just as fungible as Goldman Sachs’s.
One of the biggest conceits on the left is this idea that Social Security is fine because it is independent.
Well, if you are sitting on the Budget Committee, the fact that you have all this surplus from Social Security to play with is pretty important. And when you no longer have that surplus, you have to raise revenue some other way. And that requires raising taxes and fees, and other stuff that isn’t popular or, often, even possible.
So, as a practical matter, the disappearance of the Social Security surplus is a budgetary problem. And that is how all responsible legislators see it.
Al Gore wanted to create a lockbox so that Congress would be forced to raise the revenue they needed in a more honest way, but he didn’t succeed.
I hear all these people on the left saying that the debt it not Social Security’s fault. That’s true, but it’s also pretty much irrelevant. Without those surpluses we have a budgetary shortfall, and therefore debt.
It’s a revenue stream, like any other. And when it dries up, it impacts the debt.
I suppose you also think all the T-bills in the fund are just so much paper. How convenient. Well, since you think the government is helpless to effect the tax structure except to kick the 99% in the teeth again, maybe the states will save her by managing to increase their minimum wage. Since the federal government is helpless to do so.
The president was on the debt bullshit from the get-go, from January 2009. Had nothing to do with his re-election. He’s a true believer.
If you want to make-believe that we should be cowtowed by the debt bullies — that Bill Clinton enabled with his “surpluses” which gave rise to the false delusion that paying off the debt is desirable or attainable — be my guest. I’d rather have the president lead and knock the Grand Bargain hucksters in the teeth.
And yes, he would have won in a walk. Did you see the competition?
The 2010 elections gave them no such thing. They were about a health care bill that no one understands — barring experts and political addicts such as ourselves, and even we get some details wrong — and a shit economy.
As far as Keystone, I don’t think he opposes it, but he doesn’t really support it either. It’s something he probably wouldn’t approve if he was in a vacuum, but if there’s any slight bit of pressure from Bidness or if the Congress forces his hand, he’ll approve it in a heartbeat. Not worth the political fallout from approving a “job creator” (that he himself knows won’t create jobs).
Well, yes. And what could be a higher priority than keeping the government open? Perfect cover.
Does it ever occur to you that he might “want” Chained CPI about as much as he “wanted” to bomb Syria?
Sorry, Boo. The circumstantial evidence is against you. He was the only Senator/House member at the opening of the Hamilton Project. He’s buddy/buddy with Bob Rubin. Why do you think “Turbo Tax” Timmy, Larry Summers and Jack Lew have, or had, the jobs they do? He’s been blabbering on about the need for a “grand bargain”/deficit reduction since he was sworn in for his first term. Given that Democrats controlled the House and Senate back then, he’s not being forced into anything. It’s what he believes.
I’ve been watching him since November 2007 and it’s pretty clear he actually wants Chained CPI.
Also, don’t call them pro-energy democrats. They’re not. They’re pro-raping the Earth democrats.
David Corn’s piece about the political savvy that Obama shares with Johnson is intriguing. But if anything, Corn may be underestimating his abilities. Keystone ain’t over til it’s over with this president.
Go, Marty, Go.
Yes, this is where the CR is headed, as directed by the army of Big Oil lobbyists. Repubs ultimately will approve CR funding if the catastrophic Keystone is approved via their fiscal blackmail. Hatred of environmentalists and environmental regulation has been taught to be the strongest emotion and the most unifying feature of the conserva-cogs. There is nothing Repubs won’t do for Big Oil, as will many Dems. Big Oil certainly pays our elected officials the biggest bribes by far.
I suppose such a statutory provision could be taken to court as an unconstitutional restraint on the prez’s power over conducting foreign policy. I think we know what Roberts Repubs would ultimately do with that argument and a Dem prez.
But why couldn’t Krapstone be attached as the poison pill for the debt ceiling? Some procedural reason? This would be most fitting for “conservatism”, since they either want to create a governmental apocalypse or an environmental one—preferably both, of course, but give them time, the world wasn’t destroyed in a day!
From I understood earlier in the week, it was supposed to be attached to the debt ceiling.
That would suck. To me approving Keystone XL would be no less insanely irresponsible than defunding Obamacare, so I don’t see how one is more acceptable than the other as a condition for keeping the government open.