Boehner: “The Best We Could Get”

From NRO’s The Corner:

House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) told GOP members on a conference call Sunday evening that he had reached a deal with congressional leaders and the White House, but that it wouldn’t happen “unless we have membership on board.” It remains to be seen how many House Republicans will end up supporting the final package, but members on the call told National Review Online they thought it would ultimately pass with bipartisan support. “I’m not sure I’m going to support it but I think it will probably pass,” said freshman Rep. Dennis Ross (R., Fla.). Members described the tone of the call as overwhelmingly positive, with many praising Boehner’s efforts in the negotiations. Despite his concerns about the final deal, Ross said “leadership has done a very good job of getting it to this point,” and described a sense of relief among members, many of whom may not love the deal, but are nonetheless happy to be moving on to the next fight.

According to sources, Boehner said the deal was “the best that we could get.” In particular, he thanked the 87 freshmen members for their input, without which “we wouldn’t have gotten this far.” Ross concurred. “I think the freshman class has been very valuable to this process,” he said…

That last bit is really best translated as, “goodness, we didn’t fully realize until now that these TEA Party people are serious!”.  But, all in all, it is a good thing – this is the first time since the glory days of 1995 that a GOP House Speaker can count on a solid, conservative GOP caucus…one which won’t go all soft on him in return for campaign cash and other DC blandishments.  But it is not the best we could get – it is the best that the GOP could get using this strategy.

We need to think carefully not just about what we want, but how we want to get there.  We did not do a good enough job of forcing the Democrats to defend their disgusting Big Government liberalism – they were defensive, to be sure, but they were still defending the concept of using government money to be nice to people…we need tactics which will expose the fact that they really want to use government to reward liberal cronies.

A relentless drumbeat of just who among the rich and powerful are getting government money and just who they donate to (and speak and write in favor of) should be used in the next battle.  Show the American people that “food for the starving” really works out to “Cadillac for Nancy Pelosi’s crony-capitalist”.  These people on the left have been looting the Treasury for decades.  Sweat heart deals for government contracts, special tax and regulatory breaks:  things like that and the pols get, in return, campaign cash, investment tips and well paid corporate sinecures once out of office.  Show this to the American people…force the liberals away from defending charity and in to defending their greed for wealth and power.

We also need to win the class war – and my idea of a “wealth tax” is the best way to end that battle once and for all.  Democrats are endlessly harping on how we GOPers want to steal food out of granny’s mouth so we can give tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.  Do them one better – propose a tax which will won’t hit anyone except a millionaire or billionaire and watch the Democrats try to stop it…force them to reveal that their “tax the rich” rhetoric is really “tax the middle class, leave our rich donors alone”.

Still and all a good effort.  Big Government liberalism is firmly on the defensive – and Obama and his Democrats will have to defend their worthless, wasteful, immoral and un-American welfare State all through 2012.  We have them on the run – now, let’s push them over the edge, and take back our country.

Debt Deal Done, Fake Crisis Averted

Hot Air has the details - it mostly works out to a defeat for the left as it looks like they didn’t get tax hikes, didn’t get as much new debt ceiling as they wanted and were prevented from gutting defense.  The deal was done because, in the end, Obama saw his approval rating cratering and wanted to stop the bleeding – some times you do have to let a crisis go to waste.  Especially when you made one up out of whole cloth.

The real budget crisis comes in 2015 or so if we don’t significantly cut spending by then.  While Obama is President, we won’t be able to do that – so the whole solution to our real budget crisis is to get Obama out of the White House in 2012.

Budget Deal in the Works

From the AP:

Officials say the White House and Republican leaders in Congress are making significant progress toward a last-minute agreement to avoid a default threatened for next week.

These officials say the two sides are discussing a plan to raise the debt limit by about $2.4 trillion and enact spending cuts of a slightly larger amount in two stages.

The deal under discussion would also require Congress to vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, but not require its approval.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the discussions.

Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air surmises that, finally, Obama is actually willing to state what he wants – what he will sign.  In other words, we’re finally getting a White House plan for the debt.  All this time we’ve been pretty much working in a void because Obama never indicated what was actually acceptable to him…and it seems that Reid had actually  signed on to the GOP plan, at Obama’s behest, only to be told at the last minute by Obama that he wouldn’t sign it.

My feeling is that Obama was hoping that the looming crisis (which is entirely fake, by the way) would force the GOP to cave and they’d go ahead and either give him a “clean” debt ceiling increase through 2013 or, at least, go along with some tax hikes.  As it became clear that GOP would give him neither of these things – and as Obama’s approval rating has cratered through this mess – I think that someone finally got Obama to realize that he had to defuse this manufactured crisis…make it go away before the worst of all things happened:  Tuesday arrived and the world didn’t end.

For our side, we’ve done well – we’ve laid down the marker for future budget negotiations and demonstrated conclusively that the GOP – at least in its TEA Party element – will not back down from a fight.

“Never let a crisis go to waste” was Obama’s watchword from day one…even if he had to make up a crisis.  But now Obama has learned that dishonesty can only carry you so far.

The Boehner Plan 2.0

According to the CBO (PDF) it would:

…reduce budget deficits by $915 billion between 2012 and 2021 relative to CBO’s March 2011 baseline adjusted for subsequent appropriations action…

Not much, but it is a genuine reduction in spending and of nearly a trillion dollars.

Boys and girls, fellow conservatives and allied libertarians, this is the best we’re going to get while Reid runs the Senate and Obama wields the veto pen.  We’ve won – we’ve forced the GOP to stand firm against tax hikes and hold out for genuine reductions in spending.  If Boehner can get this through the House, then our duty will be to put as much pressure as we can on the Senate to pass it.  That done, it doesn’t matter what Obama does – sign or veto, it still works out to a victory for us.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  Sure, I’d like to lop off a trillion from the 2012 budget, but that just isn’t going to happen. No matter how annoying it is, we still have to abide by the results of the 2008 election in the White House and the Senate.  So, accept this deal – and then let’s get in to 2012 where we’ll fight to get a White House and a Senate which will cut a trillion out of the 2013 budget.

Boehner: Obama is Like Jell-O

From ABC:

In a meeting with a small group of reporters in his Capitol Hill office this morning, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, criticized President Obama and White House officials for their lack of resolve in negotiations.

“Dealing with them the last couple months has been like dealing with Jell-o,” Boehner said. “Some days it’s firmer than others. Sometimes it’s like they’ve left it out over night.”

Boehner explained that talks broke down over the weekend because, he said, the president backed off entitlement reforms so much from Friday to Saturday, “It was Jell-o; it was damn near liquid.”

Rather hard to negotiate with someone who’s position continually shifts.  We’ve seen this before – again and again Obama has refused to put his own ideas firmly on the table…meanwhile, however, the business of the country does need to be done, so men and women with more firmness come up with actual proposals, only to see them sink in the morass of Obama indecision.

I doubt there is much left in Obama outside a desire to be re-elected.  He seems to have resigned any semblance of leadership in domestic or foreign policy and is only interested in events in so far as he feels he can use them for personal, political advantage.

It is probably time for us to give up on Obama and negotiations:  pass a bill which raises the debt limit while cutting $1.50 for each additional dollar of new debt and just hand it off to the Senate.  Let them vote it up or down, or amend it and send it back to the House.  We can sit back and wait – we’ll have passed our plan and can reasonably state to the American people that we’re just waiting to see what Reid and Obama come up with in response.

At any rate, there is something wrong – and vaguely un-American – in seeing our Congressional leaders closeted with the President to work out a plan which, presumptively, would be passed through Congress with minimal debate and no real chance to amend…a sort of decree from on high which Congress is supposed to rubber stamp.  Better to just do it properly and let the political chips fall where they may – in the end, if we stand firm on principal while showing our willingness to do the job, we’ll reap the benefit, in my view.

Boehner Seeks Limited Budget Deal

A statement from the Speaker:

Despite good-faith efforts to find common ground, the White House will not pursue a bigger debt reduction agreement without tax hikes. I believe the best approach may be to focus on producing a smaller measure, based on the cuts identified in the Biden-led negotiations, that still meets our call for spending reforms and cuts greater than the amount of any debt limit increase.

It does appear we are at an impasse – Democrats won’t go for a major package without tax hikes, while we can’t accept tax hikes.  Unless there was a cave-in by the GOP, this is pretty much what I expected.

Of course, it would be better if we didn’t agree to any increase in the debt limit – there would be scare stories aplenty if that happened and the markets would at least temporarily tank…but as the markets are due to tank, anyway, the actual economic effect would be minimal.  And I do believe that as on the morrow of no new debt the world did not end, people would shrug off the event and any hit we took in the polls would be short-lived – and the long term payoff would be immense as the people would absolutely trust us on the matter of the budget.

But, we don’t quite have that sort of Congress, yet.  We’ll have to work for one in 2012 – meanwhile, a mini-deal which actually cuts spending will be good for the country and good for us…and we can carry the fight in to next year, with the Democrats having to defend Big Government while we defend freedom.

Now, if we could only get the GOP leadership to make it a fight against Big Government and Big Corporation and really hang the rotten system on the Democrats, that would be wonderful…