Letter 2 America for October 15, 2013

Dear America,

Last week, John Boehner made a putative "good faith offer" to President Obama; the Republicans will pass a six week extension of the debt ceiling--not a clean continuing resolution (CR) though--if The President will sit down with Republicans to discuss the issues they want to discuss...it was just that vague, this good faith offer.  President Obama apparently told them that he had to see what they passed before he would agree, and the Republicans went silently back to their cars to go back to The House to work on a bill to send him.  But as to that, there are two things that must be born in mind.  First, Boehner always said in his private meetings with his caucus that he will never let the country default on its debts for failure to increase the debt ceiling.  Thus, this good faith offer is just Boehner saying out loud what he has already whispered to his cohorts in the past.  He knows that neither he nor his party can run the risk of causing the catastrophe predicted if default occurs because the debt ceiling is not raised, and so the reality is that he is offering nothing to President Obama and the Democrats that he wasn't intending to give anyway.  So much for good faith.

But second, despite Boehner's ostensible abandonment of defunding Obamacare as a raison d'être, most of those who have manned the Tea Party and ultra-conservative guns over the past several weeks have done no such thing.  To put it concisely, it will be something of a miracle if Boehner can produce a "clean" debt ceiling extension in the House of Representatives, and that failure will be just one more shovel full out of the hole he and his political kith have already dug for themselves, but there's more.  It is common knowledge that he could have called any of the four "clean CR's" passed in The Senate to the floor for a vote, and it would have passed, such is the consternation among the members of the Republican Party generally about the harm to the cause of Republicanism that is being done with voters.  But what came out yesterday was that it didn't have to be Boehner who called the Senate-passed CR's for a vote.  At the eleventh hour...literally...before funding for government operations ran out, the Republicans called a late night session of The House and passed a rules change that made it possible for Eric Cantor, Boehner's second in command within his party, to call the Senate CR bills to the floor for a vote...and it also prevented anyone but Cantor or his designee from doing so.  Before this special change, the rule stated that when there was an impasse on funding, anyone could call a CR for a vote, but when the acting speaker presiding over the chamber at the time was confronted with this rule change yesterday, he admitted that the reason was that the Republicans wanted to go to the conference committee that The Senate had been asking for since the first Senate CR was passed months ago.  But the real reason was that if a conference were pending, they couldn't be blamed for intransigency...as if no one would notice that it was only their obduracy that was preventing the funding of the government, regardless of what form it took.

But a week has passed and there has been a collegiality redux in The Senate, specifically between Mitch McConnell, the redoubtable conservative troll and Harry Reid, the Democratic troll with the dresser right next to McConnell's under the bridge.  As the two vie for the title of Mr. Nice Guy in this situation, it begins to seem more and more like McConnell is the good cop and Boehner the bad.  The Senate has already passed what the Democrats want, with Republican acquiescence, so there really isn't anything to be gained for the Democrats in these high level negotiations.  Boehner has always said he would capitulate on the issue of raising the debt level, and that is what has been added to the negotiations in The Senate...discussion of a foregone conclusion.  The Senate CR was already a done deal, and now The House will at best pass a short term one, which is what they want anyway so that they can try this trick again in 2014...an election year.  

So claims of good faith to the contrary, the Republicans are running the same game they have run every year since 2010, but they get a little smoother at it each time.  That's why the Democrats have to be careful.  When there's a snake in the grass, you always have to be careful where you step, or you can't let the camel put his nose in the tent, or if you give them an inch...you know what I mean.

Your friend,

Mike