President Obama on Wednesday jumped into the sluggish negotiations over reducing the budget deficit, spearheading a debate that has yet to produce a clear path to political victory for the White House – if one even exists. The president met with Senate Democrats Wednesday and plans to discuss deficit fixes with their Republican counterparts Thursday.
So far, however, Republicans have declared as a nonstarter a tax increase on the wealthy sought by Democrats while Democrats decried conservative proposals to overhaul Medicare and Medicaid.
With no solution imminent, some lawmakers say they expect few long-term reductions beyond those needed to convince Republicans to raise the debt limit.
The impasse is politically risky for Obama, who vowed to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and cut trillions of dollars in spending as part of an effort to reverse the flow of red ink. He also is eager to showcase control of an issue likely to define the 2012 election.
Though Obama has indicated willingness to compromise, his threshold for a deal remains hazy.
“My sense is this is going to come down to some kind of agreement on tax expenditures,” said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University. “I think they’ll settle on tax loopholes so Republicans can camouflage tax increases and then punt on some of the bigger things like Medicare — then wait until the political climate is less heated for the bigger items.”
However, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has called for “trillions, not billions” in cuts, a benchmark unreachable by such relatively minor changes.
Critics predict Obama will play a low-key role in the debate, waiting until a compromise is hashed out before claiming credit.
“He ought to sign on to any deal that embraces his own deficit commission,” said former Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin. “That gives him cover. But he’s yet to lead from the front during any part of the budget debate. Let’s just say he has elasticity in his views and he’s escaped scorn for it thus far.”
Obama’s deficit commission, headed by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, called for slashing $4 trillion from budget deficits over the next decade, a more ambitious proposal than the blueprint laid out by Obama.
The president called for cuts in defense spending, the elimination of tax cuts for the richest Americans and the closing of tax loopholes but proposed no dramatic changes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which he acknowledged were the primary drivers of a runaway federal deficit.
White House officials say it remains far too early to dismiss the potential for a final deal on the budget cuts, arguing they were able to reach deals in the past on taxes and to avoid a government shutdown despite long-stalled deliberations.
“These kinds of negotiations aren’t resolved immediately; these are tough issues,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney. “We can find common ground.”
That assessment is certainly optimistic, with some liberal lawmakers calling for more tax increases and conservatives dead set against any such increases — and competing proposals continuing to gain little traction.
Speaking more bluntly than others in the Obama administration, Vice President Biden praised the direction of the debate but conceded, “Whether we can get to the finish line with this group is another question.”
