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Jewish World Review
Oct 17, 2011
19 Tishrei, 5772
The waiting for nothing Congress
By
Dana Milbank
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Here in Washington, our leaders seem to be governing under the creed of the old Brooklyn Dodgers: Wait ’til next year.
The baseball team’s long-suffering fans consoled themselves with that phrase after each failure to win the World Series. And now lawmakers and political advisers are using it to justify their failure to do what they are supposed to be doing to fix the nation’s problems. “We have said all along: There [are] going to be some matters left for the election,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor informed reporters at his news conference last week. Until then, he said, President Obama should work with lawmakers in “an incremental way.” The next day, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) told NBC’s Chuck Todd that “not much” is going to pass the Senate before the elections. “I think the country is in essentially an economic holding pattern,” he said. Obama, too, has seemed willing at times to wait for the voters’ verdict, telling Cantor during budget negotiations that “I’m going to the American people with this.” Under the wait-’til-next-year logic, Republicans believe that if they can gain control of the Senate, and maybe the White House, all their problems will be solved. Democrats, though less enthusiastic about their prospects, think that if they can make some gains in the House, and if Obama can win a second term, their agenda will have renewed momentum. And so both sides acquiesce in a standstill: a series of short-term funding bills and a supercommittee that postpones the most painful choices until after the election. But the wait-’til-next-year approach ignores one crucial consideration: The 2012 elections, whatever the outcome, aren’t going to change the stalemate that has gripped this town. Certainly, if Republicans won the presidency and the Senate next year, they would be in a much better position to repeal pieces of the health-care law and to undo other elements of Obama’s agenda. But undoing is very different from doing, and even under the most optimistic scenario for Republicans, Democrats would still have more than enough votes to bring the GOP agenda to a halt in the Senate. To secure a filibuster-proof majority, Republicans would have to gain 13 Senate seats next year. Charlie Cook, the elections handicapper, predicts that they will gain three to six. If they keep all Republican seats, beat six Democratic incumbents and win the five open seats considered to be in play, they’d still come up two seats short of 13. More likely, Republicans could knock off enough moderate Democratic senators to gain a thin majority — but they would then face a more liberal and unified Democratic minority. “Republicans have certainly shown their willingness to make the filibuster standard practice,” said one adviser to Democratic Senate leadership, “so they have set a precedent, inadvertently perhaps, for making its deployment a routine matter.” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell seems to grasp this in his more candid moments. He has argued that a divided government provides “the best time, and some would argue the only time, to do really hard things, because really hard things done on a partisan basis cannot be accomplished” without creating “a wipeout in the next election.” That’s certainly true: If Republicans were to win the White House and the Senate and then use that power to rewrite Medicare and Social Security without Democratic support, the backlash would make the Tea Party look genteel. But just as often, McConnell gets swept up in the wait-’til-next-year logic, as when he said that defeating Obama is “the single most important thing we want to achieve.” Similar wishes drove Paul Ryan, the House budget committee chairman, to forgo a debt compromise with Democrats in favor of a partisan plan that cuts spending without tax increases. “We need to accentuate” differences, Ryan said, “to give the country a real clear choice” in 2012. But Americans have already made a clear choice, repeatedly: They want their representatives to compromise. In the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 64 percent said lawmakers should attack the debt problem with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. But only 25 percent thought that lawmakers will agree on a plan. The lack of faith that lawmakers will do the obvious, necessary things goes a long way toward explaining why Congress enjoys an approval rate of 14 percent. In this case, good things do not come to those who wait.
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Previously:
• 10/12/11 Sparsely occupied D.C.: Why the movement hasn't caught on
• 10/10/11 Can Obama strike an alliance with Occupy Wall Street?
• 10/06/11 Chris Christie, such a presidential tease
• 10/05/11 Obama and his foot soldiers go toe to toe
• 09/28/11 Cain could deliver
• 09/26/11 Republicans? Mr. Nice Guys?
• 09/22/11 Why Ron Paul is winning the GOP primary
• 09/21/11 I am a job creator who creates no jobs
• 09/20/11 Obama launches a revolution
• 09/19/11 Dems for Romney?
• 09/14/11 ‘Supercommittee’? More than stupor committee
• 09/07/11 Mitt Romney finds his (corporate) voice
• 09/01/11 The infallible Dick Cheney
• 08/31/11 This liberal says Perry is the ultimate conservative candidate
• 08/29/11 Wanted: More bite from Obama the Great Nibbler
• 08/10/11 How Rep. Austin Scott betrayed his Tea Party roots
• 08/09/11 The most powerful man on Earth?
• 08/08/11 The FAA shutdown and the new rules of Washington
• 08/04/11 Lt. Col. Allen West fires a round at the Tea Party
• 08/03/11 Government on autopilot
• 08/02/11 Dems mourn debt deal like death
• 07/27/11 Life imitates sport
• 07/26/11 Obama and Boehner take on Washington
• 07/21/11 Why Americans are angry at Congress
• 07/20/11 The new party of Reagan
• 07/18/11 Rob Portman, the boring Midwesterner who could bring sanity to the debt debate
• 07/13/11 John Boehner's bind
• 07/04/11 Stephen Colbert, Karl Rove and the mockery of campaign finance
• 07/01/11 President Puts Up His Dukes, As He Ought To
• 06/28/11 Rod Blagojevich verdict: All shook up
• 06/27/11 Progressives voice their anger at Obama
• 06/24/11 ‘Mission accomplished,’ Obama style
• 06/22/11 Jon Huntsman's first step toward oblivion
• 06/21/11 Scott Walker finds making bumper stickers is easier than creating jobs
• 06/20/11 A day of awkwardness with Mitt Romney
• 06/06/11 Hubris and humility: Sarah Palin and Robert Gates on tour
• 06/02/11 The Weiner roast
• 06/01/11 Congress clocks in to clock out
• 05/30/11 Hermanator II: No More Mr. Gadfly
• 05/24/11 How Obama has empowered Netanyahu
• 05/24/11 Pawlenty bends his truth-telling
• 05/20/11 Default deniers say it's all a hoax
• 05/18/11: Gingrich gives voice to moderation
• 05/17/11: Donald Trump and the House of Horrors
• 05/16/11: The medical mystery of Mitt Romney
• 05/12/11: The body impolitic: Schock photos should tempt lawmakers to cover up
• 05/10/11: Muskets in hand, tea party blasts House Republicans
• 05/09/11: The GOP debate: America -- and the party -- needs the grown-ups
• 05/05/11: Mitch Daniels, an alternative to scary
• 05/03/11: Obama's victory lap
• 05/02/11: How the journalist prom got out of control
• 04/28/11: Obama's birther day: Why did he lower himself by appearing in the briefing room?
• 04/27/11: Obama, lost in thought
• 04/24/11: Andrew Breitbart and the rifts on the right
• 04/22/11: Ten Commandments for 2012
• 04/21/11: Obama likes Facebook. Facebook likes Obama.
• 04/18/11: Without Nancy Pelosi, Obama is adrift
• 04/15/11: If progressives ran the world
• 04/14/11: Faith in political apostasy
• 04/13/11: One man's revolution is another's political expediency
• 04/11/11: Shutdown theatrics
• 04/06/11: Paul Ryan's irresponsible budget
• 04/05/11: Robots in Congress? Yes, we replicant!
• 04/04/11: Robert Gibbs, Facebook and the White House corporate placement service
• 04/01/11: Haley Barbour, the fat cats' candidate
• 03/31/11: Republican freshmen in House shut down compromise, and possibly the government
• 03/30/11: Coburn and Durbin, the dynamic duo of the debt crisis
• 03/28/11: The Obama doctrine: A gray area the size of Libya
• 03/24/11: Dems as Weiners
• 03/23/11: Obama's quick trip from tyrant to weakling
• 03/17/11: Who's afraid of Elizabeth Warren?
• 03/15/11: The underwear flap over Bradley Manning
• 03/10/11: In Senate's debt debate, talk isn't cheap
• 03/09/11: With Obama's new Gitmo policy, Administration officials had some 'splainin to do
• 03/02/11: Issa press aide scandal is like bad reality TV
• 02/25/11: Jay Carney: Mouthpiece for an inscrutable White House
• 02/14/11: The Donald trumps the pols at CPAC
• 02/09/11: Arianna Huffington's ideological transformation
© 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
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