After weeks of useless talks, most Republicans are relieved to see GOP leaders take action in the debt ceiling stalemate. But a number of conservative lawmakers in both House and Senate are deeply troubled by what might happen if the new debt plan proposed by House Speaker John Boehner wins the day. Boehner has spoken repeatedly about “trillions, not billions” in federal spending cuts. There has been talk of $2 trillion, $3 trillion, maybe even more in cuts. But conservative lawmakers ask: Will the cuts be real?
In their Pledge to America, Republican lawmakers promised to cut $100 billion in spending in their first year in control of the House. Once in office, that proved to be exceedingly difficult. First the GOP prorated the $100 billion down to $60 billion, saying there wasn’t enough time left in the fiscal year to cut the whole amount in fiscal 2011. Then $60 billion became $32 billion, and some critics said even that relatively small figure wasn’t real.
So now both Republicans and Democrats are casually talking about cutting trillions of dollars? A cut of even $1 trillion over 10 years would require cutting $100 billion each year for the next decade, which the Republicans’ experience earlier this year suggests might be a stretch. And that’s before anyone starts talking about $2 trillion or $3 trillion.
“The devil is in the details,” says a Republican strategist closely involved in the debt fight. “When you’re talking about $1 trillion, you’re talking about $100 billion a year, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be evenly distributed among the years.” Does that mean it might be loaded mostly at the end of the decade, when it might not even happen? “That’s where you get into the details,” the strategist says.
Talk like that is not going to inspire much faith among skeptical conservatives, many of whom prefer the Cut, Cap and Balance approach that would require immediate cuts, a limit on government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product, and the passage of a balanced budget amendment. “The members have said that the reason we should fight for Cut, Cap and Balance is that our leaders will pass a bad deal with phony spending cuts and the possibility of tax hikes,” says a GOP aide. Add to that a newly appointed commission to decide on future deficit reduction and you have the classic Washington nonsolution to the problem.
Well aware of conservative skepticism, Boehner and other GOP leaders inserted a provision that would call for a vote on a balanced budget amendment later this year. It didn’t fly. “Why do we need to increase debt $2.4 trillion just to schedule a vote on the BBA?” asks one GOP aide. “It’s a pretty lame attempt to appease the Tea Party that gave Boehner the majority — not a serious effort to pass a balanced budget amendment.”
The commission is no more popular. “We’ve already had 17 commissions over three decades and $13 trillion in new debt,” tweeted Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, a leading supporter of Cut, Cap and Balance. “No more commissions.”
Twelve Republican senators and 39 Republican representatives have signed a pledge not to vote for a debt-ceiling increase without the key elements of Cut, Cap and Balance. When a Senate GOP aide was asked whether it will require 60 votes to pass the debt bill, he responded, “I think one of our guys who signed the Cut, Cap and Balance pledge would force it to be 60.” In other words, Republicans might end up filibustering themselves.
For his part, President Obama insists he will veto any plan that does not resolve the debt issue until after the 2012 elections — a position that left Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell somewhere between sputtering in rage and shaking his head in disbelief. “A bipartisan plan to resolve this crisis was literally within our reach this weekend,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Monday afternoon. But Obama rejected it — “Not for economic reasons,” McConnell said, “but as he put it, ‘to extend the debt ceiling through the next election.’ ”
Meanwhile, the Aug. 2 debt deadline, which may or may not be firm, approaches. A Standard & Poor’s analyst said recently that the issue is not so much raising the debt ceiling as lowering the trajectory of federal budget deficits. The question is, does anyone have a passable plan that will do that?
Byron York, The Examiner’s chief political correspondent, can be contacted at [email protected].
