Krauthammer’s Ransom Note
By Charles Krauthammer demands to know what the president won’t submit to an extortion demand:
For all the hyped indignation over GOP “anarchism,” there has been remarkable media reticence about the president’s intransigence. He has refused to negotiate anything unless the Republicans fully fund the government and raise the debt ceiling — unconditionally.
The question answers itself, of course. If the president submits to threats to blow up the world economy, this will become a regular feature of congressional politics that will inevitably lead to default when the parties can’t agree on an appropriate ransom. Obama was foolish to pay a ransom in 2011 and is right that this can’t happen again.
Krauthammer responds to this predictably, by dissembling about history:
Obama insists he won’t negotiate on the debt ceiling as a matter of principle. It’s never been used as leverage for extraneous (i.e., non-budgetary) demands, he claims.
Nonsense. It’s been so used dozens of times going back at least to 1973 when Ted Kennedy and Walter Mondale tried to force campaign finance reform on President Nixon. Obama himself voted against raising the debt ceiling when he was a senator in 2006.
On the first point, the key word is “tried.” Tried — and failed, after being justly criticized. On the second, casting symbolic votes against the debt ceiling does not in fact constitute us[ing the debt ceiling] as leverage.” Both Sides do not Do it; this is an innovation of Republicans in 2011 that needs to be strangled in the crib.
And should Obama miscalculate the brinkmanship, he’ll become the first president to ever allow an outright default.
As a Republican said back when the Republican Party wasn’t dominated by reactionaries with a marginal relationship to rational thought, “That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, ‘Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!'”
Krauthammer proceeds to provide his suggested extortion demands:
Raising (and indexing) the retirement age while changing the inflation measure for entitlements would themselves be major achievements. So would agreeing on a framework for genuine tax reform, although that still would remain speculative. Democrats could be offered relief on the sequester — which everyone agrees needs restructuring anyway, since it cuts agency budgets indiscriminately, often illogically, by formula.
It’s win-win. A serious attack on the deficit — good. Refiguring sequestration to restore some defense spending and some logic to discretionary spending — also good.
So, in exchange for not blowing up the world economy, Republicans will get massive cuts to popular social insurance programs and increases to defense spending, and in return Democrats will get nothing. It’s a real puzzle why Obama won’t negotiate.
And, finally, what’s really going on:
Forcing the president off Mount Olympus — priceless.
I know, that uppity fellow in the White House, governing if he won an election or something and therefore not willing to submit to extortion demands designed to extract unilateral concessions. I can’t imagine why he won’t take this friendly advice from either the right or the nominal left.