Will GOP Caucus Revolt Over Boehner's Budget?
This week, House Speaker John Boehner found himself caught between the reality of budget arithmetic and the unrealistic expectations of his caucus.
The cracks within the Republican House caucus hit the headlines this past week with a crescendo. A tiny crack began with the failure of the House to pass under suspension an extension of the Patriot Act. The crack widened with the failure of the House to pass legislation demanding that the United Nations pay us back excess money the U.S. had sent it.
House leadership then pulled trade legislation it had intended to bring to the floor when it appeared that the legislation would be rejected by renegade Republicans--making it three for three in disappointments.
The cracks became real fissures though when the long-feared reality of budget arithmetic dawned on the fiscal hawks in the party. As we predicted long ago, finding $100 billion in real deficit reduction cuts in the FY11 Continuing Resolution would prove improbable, despite promises by most Republicans that they would achieve that goal.
Now rebellion looms and on a subject much more central to Republican themes than the Patriot Act: the question of smaller government and dramatic cuts in the impending $1 trillion plus deficits.
Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers has been ordered to go back to his committee and find another $40-$50 billion in cuts from the C.R. Already several gimmicks in accounting emerge from what the committee has already produced. For example, cuts from President Obama's proposed budget, which was never enacted, are counted as reductions from spending, although those Obama increases are not part of the deficit problem and are not in the CR spending levels.
As the true relatively small amounts of real deficit-reduction cuts from the CR levels become evident, expect anger on the right to rise. Already Sen. Jim DeMint and 10 of his compatriots have sent a letter to the House GOP leadership demanding that the House find real cuts of at least $100 billion from the Continuing Resolution.
The upshot of this completely predictable scenario will be further loss of confidence in the GOP leadership in the House. We noted last month that one of the three most difficult jobs in Washington, D.C., belonged to Speaker John Boehner. As the fissures potentially widen into canyons, Boehner will continue to be caught between the reality of budget arithmetic and the unrealistic expectations of his caucus.
Ironically, none of this is Boehner's fault. Even the most casual observer of the federal budget knew that the exaggerated campaign promises of November would succumb to February's cold fiscal facts.
And, the harshest of these facts is this--with annual budgets of more than $1 trillion baked in the fiscal cake, all of this hollering over a mere $100 billion seems almost ludicrous. Just think what screams would accompany a real effort to get federal spending under control--"oh, no, not Medicare and Social Security."
Welcome to reality.