GOP Running Out of Time to Win Debt Fight
The clean debt limit vote has predictably failed. Of course, it wasn’t the best conceivable option. A debt ceiling increase coupled with serious long-term spending reform would be preferable. However it may now be the least difficult of all realistically remaining options. For all of the GOP’s talk about tying the debt vote to spending cuts or entitlement reform, is there really time to accomplish that?
There are no more than two months remaining until the debt ceiling has to be raised, and even before that a serious market downturn may precipitate a quick increase. Reforming Medicare on a tight deadline is just not a good idea. Such major legislation shouldn’t be rushed, and if it does get rushed, the result may end up being even worse than doing nothing.
In the end, the GOP has only itself to blame for not getting a good outcome. To govern is to choose, and the Republican Party seems to be more interested in campaigning than in governing. It refused to put forward any coherent platform before last year's election, so it wasn’t a surprise to anybody when House Republicans waltzed into their new majority status without any well-defined set of goals and priorities.
Had Republicans clearly prioritized long-term spending cuts, they could have offered a deal to Harry Reid and president Obama in early January whereby they would agree to pass a reasonable budget for the remainder of FY2011 (along with a debt ceiling increase sufficient to run the government until the start of the new fiscal year in October) in exchange for $20 billion in immediate cuts (not affecting Harry Reid's beloved cowboy poetry festival funding) and, most importantly, a firm commitment to start serious bipartisan work on entitlement reform in February. They also could have given assurances that passage of such reform would facilitate the subsequent smooth passage of FY2012 budget.
Instead, House Republicans failed to prioritize the long-term over the short-term and wasted a lot of legislative time funding the government in two- and three-week increments. They only achieved very modest budget cuts and didn’t address any long-term structural problems. Unfortunately, that was actually the most productive use of time in the House. The rest was totally, completely wasted on symbolic actions designed to please some (not even all) segments of the Republican base while driving away independents and setting a confrontational tone in Washington (thus making it harder to accomplish anything, given that the Democrats still control the Senate and the White House).
Congressional Republicans voted to repeal Obamacare – without offering any alternative. They conducted hearings on NPR funding – measuring in the mere millions at a time of trillion dollar deficits. They voted for the Ryan Plan – a charade that can be called a “budget” only in some alternative universe in which a 2.8% unemployment rate is actually attainable and sustainable. Besides everything else, the overly enthusiastic embrace of the Ryan Plan makes it much harder for Republicans to negotiate Medicare reform.
Still, maybe it isn’t too late to negotiate an increase in eligibility age for Medicare and/or Social Security. But time is running out.