What if House Speaker John Boehner made this announcement: “The House will remain in session until further notice. Members are requested to forego all recesses and weekday travel to and from their districts until a 2012 federal budget is signed into law with a comprehensive plan to balance expenditures and revenues, reform safety net entitlement programs, set a schedule to eliminate the national debt, and insure the military security of the United States.”
Can you imagine the reaction in the offices of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to such a decision by Boehner? Probably something along this line:
“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi issued a joint statement today expressing their ‘profound concern and outrage over House Speaker John Boehner’s politically motivated grandstanding. The federal budget is an important concern but congressional recesses are vital because senators and representatives must return to their constituents as often as possible in order to be fully informed of their views. They must also be able to participate in fact-finding missions around the globe as they confront the many pressing problems humanity faces.'”
As for the White House, President Obama would face a simple choice: Either consign himself to irrelevance as he travels the country giving more shrill, hyperpartisan speeches about “winning the future” by spending the country into oblivion, orengaging in serious negotiations with Boehner and the House Republican majority.
Boehner could have transformed Washington’s budget debate and put himself and his party in the driver’s seat on the issue most Americans care most about. And Obama could have taken a credible step toward bringing about that “post-partisan” politics he promised us in 2008.
What we got instead from our leaders in this week before Easter was another demonstration that they still don’t get it, that they are stuck in Washington business-as-usual.
After warning us repeatedly that the country faces catastrophic consequences by failing to raise the national debt limit and confronting the federal government’s massive deficits, our leaders kept acting as if nothing is different.
Obama delivered an immensely deceitful attack on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan at George Washington University, then boarded Air Force One to begin a nationwide speaking tour, including some serious face time with high-dollar campaign donors in San Francisco.
Boehner packed up and headed to Pakistan with a bipartisan delegation of House colleagues because “a strong U.S.-Pakistan relationship is vital to the interests of both of our countries.”
So, Mr. President and Mr. Speaker, while you traveled, how much deeper into debt did the country fall?
Most Americans want no more business-as-usual from their leaders. People have had it with talk, talk, talk; they want the partisan games to stop and real decisions to be made now, not according to somebody’s campaign timetable or the legislative schedule the congressional budget process established in 1974.
Here’s something else the professional pols don’t yet grasp: Thanks to the Internet, people see through politicians’ BS in real time.
As USA Today’s Susan Page noted earlier this week in a piece on the problems facing a lackluster GOP presidential field: “The profusion of websites and bloggers means issues are raised, circulated and scrutinized with a velocity that’s unprecedented.”
So here’s the bottom line for Boehner and the GOP: In the Internet age, you change the political dynamic by acting, not by talking.
Obama and the Democrats say they want to negotiate seriously? Call their bluff, stay in town, and invite C-SPAN to televise the negotiations.
And stop thinking like it’s still 1974.
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s CopyDesk blog on washingtonexaminer.com
