Eric Levitz of New York magazine observes that the Republicans are demanding a balanced budget within ten years in return for paying our preexisting bills on time, yet they’ve ruled out any defense spending cuts or cuts to Social Security and Medicare. In other words, if we want to avoid a national default and international economic calamity, we must cut discretionary spending by 85 percent. That’s clearly not going to happen because even most Republican lawmakers would not support it.
A party serious about presenting a balanced budget could never take this approach. And if, in the end, the Republicans are going to have to settle for some modest cuts to discretionary spending, then why are they creating a hostage situation?
All this said, there are surely some modest spending cuts on which all Republicans can agree. But if your objective is merely to pare back spending on the margins, then you have no rationale for picking an apocalyptic fight over the debt limit; you can just press the issue during the negotiations over next year’s budget. The whole premise of obstructing a debt-ceiling hike is that the deficit has become a national emergency requiring extraordinary measures. Proposing mere tweaks to the federal budget belies that premise.
I don’t think it will prove possible for Speaker McCarthy to pass any budget at all this year because he can only afford to lose four votes. The gap between what the deficit hawks are demanding and what is political survivable in terms of domestic spending cuts is too great for budgetary unanimity within the caucus.
I honestly have trouble seeing how McCarthy can survive as Speaker without ultimately relying on Democratic votes, and I don’t see the Democrats lending him a hand. I think he’s doomed.
I hope he’s filling his diary, in great detail, with all his fond recollections of his time as Speaker, because odds are pretty certain that it will be very short lived experience for him.
Hopefully there are enough Democrats who’ve learned that the best strategy is situations like this is simply to draw a line in the sand and say “we await the Republicans’ proposal”.
House Republicans made lots of noise about 1) the “balanced budget”, and 2) “regular order”. All House Democrats have to do is say, “We await the Republicans’ proposal”. Where is the House GOP budget? Where are the committee hearings and the bill markups and the votes (open to lots of amendments)?
It’s Rule #4 in Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
Pelosi did that in 2005 with Bush’s Social Security “reform”, and it worked. George Mitchell did it in 1990 with Bush Sr. on the budget, and it worked.
(Meanwhile, get working (quietly) on gathering 218 signatures on a discharge petition for a clean debt ceiling bill.)