In my blog post last Friday, I said unequivocally that I would not want to be John Boehner. In my estimation, the House Speaker was caught in between a rock and a hard place, and I didn't see any way out of it. But kudos to him, for he not only found an escape, but he also scored a major victory for the Republican party.
I know that Tea Party members are crying and screaming that the budget cuts are a mere drop in the ocean of debt, and they're right. But what else could the Speaker have done? The fact is that the GOP only controls one half of one third of the federal government. You don't have to be a math major to figure out what this equation means. When it comes to the White House and Capitol Hill, Democrats > Republicans.
But despite that imbalance, Boehner somehow managed to tip the scales in favor of the GOP. Our starting point was $61 billion. The Democrats starting point was $0. The final amount of cuts made totals $38.5 billion. Again, simple arithmetic can tell you who got the better end of that deal.
Stll, reactions were mixed among many prominent Republicans. On his weekly Fox News show over the weekend, Mike Huckabee praised the deal and couldn't give John Boehner enough accolades. He said that it was the best we could have done under the circumstances, and that the Republicans should claim victory and move on. Newt Gingrich and Haley Barbour commented that it was a good starting point, though we still had a long way to go.
But others weren't as quick to hail the budget agreement. Rick Santorum didn't even mention it in a campaign speech, and both Rand Paul and Michele Bachmann decried the deal, even voting against the measure in the House.
And that, my friends, is where John Boehner will be a far more effective House Speaker than Nancy Pelosi ever was. Pelosi was known to crack the whip much more frequently and severely than she should have, forcing many of her Democratic colleagues to vote in favor of bills that were unpopular in their districts. There is no question that her tactics backfired, and her two-year reign of terror was definitely a factor in the Republicans' landslide victories last November.
Boehner, on the other hand, is playing it much cooler. He understands that the Tea Party caucus was elected to impose massive spending cuts in Washington. He knows that they have to stand their ground and stick to their guns. He also knew that he had enough votes to pass his budget deal, so rather than crack the whip, he essentially told the Tea Party reps, "Do what you have to do."
I agree with Mike Huckabee that the Republicans need to step up immediately and publicly proclaim this as a victory for them and the taxpayers. It may be only a small step in the right direction, but it's a step nonetheless.
Those who urged the Republicans not to compromise were misguided. Given the current state of Washington, nothing less than compromise was going to get a deal done. If we don't want to compromise and we want to see trillions cut from the budget instead of billions, then there are two things we need to do. Get Obama out of the White House, and oust the 23 Democratic Senators who are up for re-election. Neither of those can happen until next year, so for now we have to live with not getting everything that we want.
The 2011 budget battle was only round one in what promises to be a real slobberknocker. The more arduous tasks lie ahead, namely the debate on whether to raise the debt ceiling and the process of approving a budget for 2012.
We already know what to expect from the Democrats. We got a glimpse of their strategy last week, when they accused the GOP of putting women's lives at risk and seeing to it that seniors would starve. This is how they operate. They turn every ideological battle into an emotional one because their logic is totally flawed. All they could do is implement scare tactics and say ridiculous things on the Senate floor, like how a certain Senate Majority Leader's nine granddaughters might be deprived mammograms due to budget cuts by the big, bad Republicans. Give me a break.
Things like this will be magnified a thousand times when Paul Ryan's 2012 budget is presented in the House. It includes major reforms to entitlement programs, tax cuts, and is projected to yield $6 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade. That promises to be a lightning rod for more vicious, despicable attacks from Democrats, who will paint Ryan as the grim reaper and warn all Americans of impending doom and gloom.
And let's not forget that the Tea Party caucus is going to say that even Ryan's budget doesn't go far enough. There is talk of an alternative plan that was formed by some House Republicans, one that makes more cuts and balances the budget in far less time. Here we go again.
But the battle over the debt ceiling is the more pressing matter, as Tim Geithner has announced that America will reach its debt limit by mid-May at the latest. That's only one month away, so expect more rancor from Capitol Hill over the next few weeks.
Oh, and one last note. In my post "London Bridge is Falling Down," dated two weeks ago (that would be Monday, March 28th), I said the following in regard to the budget deal: "My best guess is that the final number will be between $30 billion and $40 billion, but most likely at the higher end of that range."
Remember, the doctor is always right. ;)
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