Boehner Takes Heat for Hardline Debt Stance
House Speaker John Boehner is this week’s D.C. whipping boy. Whether it is A.B. Stoddard writing in The Hill or Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post or venomous Matt Miller pushing the Center for American Progress line, Boehner gets it from all sides.
Last week’s botched messaging on Medicare and the debt ceiling forced Boehner to go to New York and “clarify” the House Republican position on both. His speech did two important things: it set a target for savings of $2 trillion and it put Medicare back on the table.
The perceived wisdom in Washington is that both actions amount to political suicide for Republicans.
Medicare “cuts” will bring down Republicans in 2012; it’s too toxic to touch, political analysts contend.
And $2 trillion is both too much and too little; it’s too much to cut out of spending only during four to five years unless you attack federal health care costs and it’s too little to satisfy the deficit hawks in the House who want a balanced budget. Thus, it is opined, that number is a political error.
The Speaker has the hardest job in town; his caucus wants him to lead a revolution, but not a revolution that will cause any casualties. Then the activists impose conditions on the outcome of the revolution that virtually guarantee maximum casualties.
Boehner’s effort to restore some kind of cohesion to the House GOP position is ironic. After all, it wasn’t the Speaker who said that real Medicare reform wasn’t realistic, it was Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader. Boehner didn’t say that he wouldn’t report a Medicare reform bill out of the Ways and Means Committee, it was that panel’s Chairman, Dave Camp. Boehner is trying to salvage something from others’ loose lips.
Somehow Boehner’s position reminds me of Col. Joshua Chamberlain during the Battle of Gettysburg. Chamberlain and his 20th Maine Regiment found themselves facing overwhelming Confederate forces, out-manned and out-gunned.
Out of ammunition and facing annihilation, Chamberlain shouted, “To the bayonets.” His regiment charged down the slope, stunned the Confederates and launched a Union advance.
Boehner may not be Joshua Chamberlain, and the congressional tone may not have deteriorated yet into something like a civil war, but his position in the debt ceiling battle seems similar.
Boehner has put Medicare back on the negotiating table, where it belongs. And most polls show that voters opposed to Medicare changes outnumber those in favor, although by relatively small margins.
Boehner and Ryan have already chosen their battle lines. Now their only chance for victory is an all-out messaging campaign, district by district, showing how soon Medicare will go bankrupt. The House GOP is “all in.” Only a fierce, disciplined counter-attack can keep political casualties down to bearable levels.
And, above all, Boehner needs to hope that when he shouts, “To the bayonets,” his troops will respond like those of Col. Chamberlain 148 years ago.
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