Falling On His Sword for Country & Legacy

As I mentioned in today’s Short List, Speaker Boehner has been neutered by Eric Cantor and his tea party cohorts, who want the government to live within its means so long as “its means” doesn’t have anything to do with the increasing revenue.  Even if that increased revenue comes through a simplified tax code and is accompanied with $3 in cuts for every $1 in revenue.  I think this presents Speaker Boehner with an opportunity, albeit one with severe short-term professional consequences.

As Ezra Klein reminded us this morning, on the whole the American people like compromise, even if a majority of Republicans do not.  From everything that’s been written, it would seem like Boehner knew he had a sweet deal with the Obama administration and was inching toward taking it until he was out-flanked by Cantor and the far-right of the Republican party.  I think Boehner ought to work with Obama to make this deal work and abandon Cantor and the tea party.  I think Boehner needs to appeal to the cadre of remaining Republican moderates in the House and work with Obama and the Dems to avert what would be an unmitigated economic disaster.

Sounds kind of crazy, I know.  But stay with me here.  I believe there is a segment of the Republican party that’s filled with people who want a government to govern, and I think that part of the party knows how good a deal they have.  They’re best personified by this column(NYT) from NYT Columnist David Brooks.  And I think this is the part of the Republican party that Speaker Boehner represents.  The trouble is this is now the minority wing of the Republican party.  Time and time again, Obama chased the Republicans rightward (a whole other problem for progressives), forcing Republicans to abandon several smart ideas they’ve had in the past decade.  They had to abandon them because Obama, the Other, embraced things like individual mandates and cap-and-trade.  But I believe there is a sizeable number of Republicans remaining who aren’t Grover Norquist zealots and genuinely believe it’s the job of people in Congress to compromise in the pursuit of governance.  I’m just hoping those same David Brooks’ Republicans are spoiling for a showdown with the tea party.

Which brings me back to Speaker Boehner and his opportunity.  Given Boehner’s sensibility, he is not long for his own party lest he abandon his remaining moderation.  If he can rally his fellow remaining moderates to get this deal done he will almost certainly lose the speakership, he will likely face a primary challenge, and he may well lose his seat, but it’s a play for his legacy.  He could force the showdown between David Brooks Republicans and tea party Republicans.  By falling on his own sword he may save the Republican party from permanent minority status.  And history tends to smile fondly on politicians who put the national interest (and indisputably it’s in the national interest to increase the debt-ceiling and cut the deficit) ahead of fleeting personal aggrandizement.

Perhaps I’m overly optimistic.  Perhaps I’m reading Speaker Boehner wrong.  But if he is going to be robbed of his influence, why should he hold ceremoniously to a title and let his fellow Republicans run the economy off a cliff?  Andrea Mitchell was on The Chris Matthew Show this week reiterating how much these negotiations and the compromise that will be reached is about leadership.  I couldn’t agree more and I think this is an opportunity for Speaker Boehner to demonstrate his leadership and his shot to write his name into the history books of great Speakers of the House.  If a deal doesn’t get done and the credit of the United States gets downgraded, well that path carries a legacy as well.

Looking at Revenue

House Republicans rejected an amendment to their spending bill that would have corrected an error that will cost taxpayers $53 billion over 25 years.  Matthew Steinglass breaks down the situation more here, but the issue is leasing rights on public land for deepwater drilling.  An oil company would pay royalties to a private landowner, typically, for the rights to drill on their land.  The government decided to grant free leases on otherwise commercially nonviable lands.  The commerical viability of the land was contigent on the price of oil, and thus the leases should not have been given out after the price of oil reached a certain point. Through a Minerals Management Service error, free leases were given when they shouldn't have been.


The amendment, offered by Rep. Markey, would have corrected the lease free error going forward.  It would not have sought payment for passed royalties.  According to GAO, it would netted the government $53 billion in revenue over 25 years.  You can mock the original error, but to use the error to exonerate the oil companies from paying the leases in the future seems like a stretch.  We have been hearing constantly about how we have to cut spending, but there are two sides to the ledger.  Passage of this amendment would have done very little to help the deficit, but the revenue collected would have fully funded USAID every year, according to figures taken from the Republican Study Committee.  If Speaker Boehner and his House Republican colleagues were truly serious about addressing the deficit, you would think they'd support an amendment that collects royalties from oil companies, especially since these same oil companies pay royalties to use private land.

Just the Facts, Speaker Boehner

Speaker John Boehner was on Meet the Press yesterday.  Interviewer David Gregory brought up the persistent notion within Republican circles that President Obama was not born in the United States and that President Obama is a Muslim.  Mr. Gregory points to a clip on Fox News where half or more members of a Republican study group believe that President Obama is a Muslim.  Mr. Gregory challenged Speaker Boehner to decide if he has a responsibility to tell the American people the facts.  Speaker Boehner said it’s not for him to tell people what to think, he then said the state of Hawaii has said President Obama was born in that state.  He also said he will take the President at his word when he says he’s a Christian.

I was flabbergasted by this response.  His answer was not an assertion of the facts, it was a statement of faith.  But the discussion wasn’t a matter of faith, it was a matter of fact.  President Obama was born in Hawaii.  President Obama is a practicing Christian.  These are facts and it’s disappointing that the Speaker of the House, the man who will need to work with the White House to address the policy needs of this country, can’t simply say that.  People will say I’m nitpicking, and maybe I am, but when you watch the video you can see Speaker Boehner trying to rhetorically discredit the position he says he believes in.  It was a pathetic display.  Then again, maybe I should be unsurprised.  Paul Krugman has been spending some time in his columns recently to address the Republican party’s rejection of facts and analysis time and time and time again to score some cheap political points.  Maybe I should be thankful Speaker Boehner even said Obama was a Christian, but his half-hearted defense in the face of blatant falsehoods was pathetic and cowardly.  We should be able to expect more.

You can watch the full exchange to make up your own mind here:

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Not So Divided

I don’t like doing it, but I have to respectfully disagree with Paul Krugman.  His column today talks about what he perceives as two moralities.  He believes, “we are a deeply divided nation and are likely to remain one for a long time. By all means, let’s listen to each other more carefully; but what we’ll discover, I fear, is how far apart we are.”  Krugman continues:

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.
The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.

My dissent is one of scope, not message.  I believe there are people who consider taxes and social safety to be “tyrannical impositions on their liberty.”  I also believe, if that’s where you are coming from, then violence seems an apt response.  That said, I think the people who truly believe that are a very very small minority.  I don’t think the divide is so great in reality, but rather in rhetoric.

A few highly influential conservative pundits have gotten very rich by stoking the flames of government’s illegitimacy and wrapping themselves in the cloak of individual responsibility.  I doubt that actually believe all of it, but it makes them money.  Why not keeping saying the extreme if it’s profitable?

I also think the current Republican party has determined that they should indulge this rhetoric because it is politically advantageous.  Those that have been part of governing (as good will partners or not) like Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell have calculated the political advantage of accepting the rhetoric, while governing from a more center-right perspective.  Yes, I believe they are being disingenuous.  Not entirely, but on many issues I think they found it easier to grab a pitchfork, then to raise their voice for calm.

Finally, I just don’t think the number of people in this country that would condemn their neighbor to poverty because they don’t like paying taxes is very large.  Most Americans aren’t so cruel, or so short-sided.  I honestly believe those Americans who consider themselves right of center either have been recipients or know someone who has been a recipient of the safety net.  This knowledge and the good it brought to themselves, a freind, or family member also reminds them that someday they might need that net, or their kids might, or their parents.

I understand what Krugman is trying to say, and I certainly wish for more honest conversations about what we truly object to, as opposed to what’s politically advantageous to object to, but I don’t think the divide is so great.  But I also enjoy waffling between cynicism and optimism.  Le sigh.

Boehner's Tears and His Actions

Timothy Egan, over at The New York Times has a great post up talking about John Boehner's teary-eyed profile on 60 minutes. Beyond the double-standard that would have disallowed Nancy Pelosi to withstand a sob-fest when she became Speaker of the House, there is also the question of why John Boehner cries so much:

"'Making sure these kids have a shot at the American dream like I did is very important,' [Boehner] said, choking up."

Egan then does a great job of listing all the things that are designed to help people have a shot at the American dream, but that John Boehner has voted against. Time and again Boehner's actions, his votes, have been obstacles to people achieving something greater.

To me, this is the great challenge to America in the 21st century. The slow erosion of social safety nets and the lock-step aversion of the Republican party to consider new social safety nets will allow the rate of disparity to continue apace.

I doubt John Boehner will cry when presented with the statistics that show a consolidation of wealth at the highest tiers of earners. It's easier to get teary-eyed at the abstraction of the American dream, then to dry your eyes and help make it a reality for people.

UPDATED: h/t to Matt Yglesias for pointing out this peice in The New York Times by David Leonhardt. Mr. Leonhardt makes a point I couldn't quite put to words and does so eloquently:

It's easy to look at the current debate and see an unavoidable trade-off between this country's two economic traditions - risk-taking and security. but I don't think that's quite right. I think it is ultimately as misplaced as those worries about Social Security and Medicare equaling Bolshevism.

Guaranteeing people a decent retirement and decent health care does more then smooth out the rough edges of capitalism. Those guarantees give people the freedom to take risks. If you know that professional failure won't leave you penniless and won't prevent your child form receiving needed medical care, you can leave the comfort of a large corporation and take a chance on your own idea. You can take a shot at becoming the next great American entrepreneur.

To me, this is precisely why we need social safety nets. In most policy debates we are given this false choice between individual ingenuity and government coddling. Leonhardt hits on the point quite nicely that some sort of economic backstop can free people to take the big swings and aim for the fences.