Boehner missed opportunity to transcend partisanship and save the nation
by Hugh Holub on Jul. 30, 2011, under politicsHouse Speaker John Boehner had a chance to become Speaker of the entire House of Representatives instead of just trying to hold together his fractured caucus of Republicans.
Instead of trying to find 217 votes within the Republicans in the House…which meant passing a bill no Democrat could ever support….Boehner could have taken another path.
Here is that path…there appears to be a majority in both houses of Congress for a package of spending custs and debt reduction which include closing some tax loopholes.
Instead of sticking a Constitutional amendment on the House bill, Boehner could have reached out to Democrats, dropped the Constitutional amendment, added more budget cuts and put in a tax loophole elimination provision.
Yes Boehner would have lost maybe 80 of his Tea Party hobbits.
But he could have gained 90 Democrats in return and passed a bill that would have been impossible for the Senate to reject.
Boehner would have been Speaker and leader of the entire House of Representatives.
Sure he would have been viciously attacked by the hobbits in his own party, and maybe even lose the Speaker’s chair as a result.
But he would have saved America and gone down in history as a real leader for the entire country instead of a partisan hack. He would have become the poster child for courage instead of a desparate politician trying to find 217 votes in his own party.
Our neighbors the Tohono O’odham have a story about Baboquivari…the sacred mountain on the eastern edge of their lands.
Baboquivari is not only a mountain, it is a symbloic place where the tides of history can be changed by those who stand at the boundary between the past and the future…and act for the benefit of all the people. You don’t have to stand on the mountain itself to encounter a “Baboquivari moment”.
Most folks never want to stand at the point of Baboquivari where they can change the direction of history because there are awesome energies loose….not a few people have been driven off Baboquivari mountain by lightning on clear sky days.
But fate sometimes propels people to a Baboquivari moment where what they do at that moment can have profound positive or negative impacts of the whole world.
They can put their self interest ahead of doing the right thing for everyone.
Or they can see the higher purpose and need and act, even though that act may not be in their immediate self-interest.
Boehner had his Baboquivari moment the other day…and he might have saved his power inside the House Republican caucus, but he did nothing to help America transcend the debt limit fight and move forward.
Harry Reid over at the Senate will also stand at Baboquivari, as will Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Obama in the next few days.
Someone needs to put their partisan pandering aside and do the right thing for America.
July 30th, 2011 on 8:33 am
I disagree. Boehner would not have obtained enough Dem votes to counteract the losses of Gop votes if he had not included the ‘balanced amendment’ portion of the proposal.
July 30th, 2011 on 8:50 am
Maybe….but this wasn’t the right time to push the balanced amendment….I’ll bet if the percent of GPD were 20% instead of 18% it might actually pass.
If the states have to balance their budgets annually , the feds ought to have to as well.
I wish we had the right of Initiative to put on the table federal laws and conmstitutional amendments for the people to vote on the way we can in Arizona.
Be a whole new ball game.
July 30th, 2011 on 10:09 am
“If the states have to balance their budgets annually , the feds ought to have to as well.”
- The states don’t have to worry about the cost of fighting wars or the cost of responding to armed aggression. If the federal government had been required to have a balanced budget it could have never responded to Pearl Harbor or assist our allies in Europe again the Nazis.
The federal government needs to spend more than it takes in during times of war and/or economic recession – but it also needs to spends less than it takes in in times of peace and a strong economy. When GW Bush took office the national debt was $5.768 trillion but we had a budget surplus that was projected to have a more than $6 trillion surplus over the next 10 years. We could have paid back the entire national debt and entered the Great Recession debit free! But no, Bush and the Republican Congress passed tax cuts that were not needed and start 2 unnecessary wars which nearly doubled the national debt when he left office! And now the Republicans are creating a unnecessary crisis by refusing to increase the debt limit. Why? The only reason is because a Democrat occupies the White House. Saint Ronnie Reagan increased the national debt 11 times. This very same Republican leadership voted to increase the debt limit when Bush was in the W.H. They don’t give a rat’s ass about the debt, all they care about is political power.
August 9th, 2011 on 12:43 am
You’re right. The right time to do the Balanced Budget Amendment was under the second Clinton administration when we had surpluses and the Democrats wanted nothing to do with it then either.
July 30th, 2011 on 8:40 am
No doubt in which way this publication is slanted. Very poor article and as usual leaving out both sides of the story.
July 30th, 2011 on 9:01 am
There is no “slant” from the publication as each blogger here has their own perspective and each of us shares whaty our perspective is…and between us all we are all over the political spectrum.
I happen to very strongly support getting rid of tax loopholes…even some that I personlly benefit from like the mortgage interest deduction…as long as everyone else shares the pain. I would however, take the resulting increased revenue and sequester that for debt reduction and not treat the revenue as more money for Congress to appropriate.
I do not drink Grover Norquist’s Kool Aid about what constitutes a tax “increase”.
I favor a flat tax of like 10%, no gimmcks, no social policy inside the tax code….no class war elements in the code….which I think does not make me a “liberal”.
So what is the other side of the story as you see it? You too could have a blog on the Citizen if you want the other side as you see it to be heard.
August 8th, 2011 on 11:59 pm
And what would the other side be Tommy?
July 30th, 2011 on 8:47 am
It is Harry Reid and his tax-and-spend Democrats who are giving no compromise to the GOP efforts to reign in America’s out-of-control spending (thanks to Obama). The liberal rag Tucson Citizen couldn’t be more wrong or more partisan.
July 30th, 2011 on 8:53 am
Hard to understand how the Tucson Citizen can be characterized by any definition liberal or conservative when it is merely an aggregate of lots of individual blogs each of which offers their own take on events. There is no “TucsonCitizen” perspective.
August 9th, 2011 on 12:01 am
And what would that compromise be Tarheel?
July 30th, 2011 on 8:49 am
Hobbits are folk who love good food, drink and laughter. The tea party is none of those things, so please find another name for them.
July 30th, 2011 on 8:51 am
Forward to the Wall Street Journal and John McCain
July 30th, 2011 on 8:51 am
It is ever so easy for all of us arm-chair quarterbacks to say what Mr. Boehner should or shouldn’t have done. None of us were there in the meetings. None of us were there for the quiet cocktail hour discussions. None of us are in Washington privy to everything that goes on. It is so easy for all of us to say what we think should be happening. It is so easy to criticize. As Mr. Obama found out when he walked into the White House as the resident for at least 4 years it wasn’t what he thought was going on. They system and ideas weren’t as simple as the thought. This goes for pretty much anyone who gets sent to Washington, or a state capital or a local board. It is high time the media realized and understands they only know what Washington wants them to know and same for the voters. I am not a supporter of Obama. I am not a supporter of politicians in general anymore. I think they should all have term limits, limited budgets to run their elections with and constant reminders that WE THE VOTERS are the country and will control this country. They are our elected SERVANTS. The media is not the ones running this country. They are only to report the truth and nothing but the truth. Bring credibility back to the media and we might be getting somewhere.
July 30th, 2011 on 9:15 am
Good point….but there is something really interesting about the breakdown of central information control as historically exercised by the owners of newspapers and tv stations/networks….the rise of the internet and bloggers.
Even sitting out here 2,000 miles from DC in America’s answer to Australia sometimes we can reach through all the noise and competition and someone back there picks up what was tossed into the cybershpere.
In another life I was deep inside the belly of the beast writing speeches for presidential candidates and had many experiences as the “fly on the wall” while public policy was being made behind closed doors.
The point is rarely inside the spin of power does anyone stop and ask “what is this all really about?”
There is great wisdom in the Tohono O’Odham Baboquivari story..including a part that people wo actively seek the changing moment maybe aren’t the ones really qualified to make the kinds of decisions that need to be made. A Native American version of the Cincinnatus story and the American parable of Goerge Washginton..stepping up at the time of need then going home to Mount Vernon.
July 30th, 2011 on 8:58 am
Politicans do not raise to their level because they “do what’s best for America”! They get there because they are willing to do what their respective paying backers want, period! Choosing self interest over country is what they are professional at! There’s no requirement that they put country first…not even their pledges! Their government “oath” doesn’t even say they put the economic interest of the nation first!
No wonder many what to be “strict constructionist” when it pleases them! They can violate the best spirit of the Constitution, its stated mechanism to be changed, by never changing it to reflect modern society changes and progress. And then they only want to change it when its to their advantage, not the nation’s!
With this current crop of idiots, we’d still have slavery!
If we had a President with balls, the people would have a chance. He’d rather negotiate and give everything away, than take a hard stand, define his stand clearly from the beginning, control the message, and hold folks accountable via use of history and FACTS! The best and the brightest without any balls is just not going to CHANGE anything.
Where’s Bill Clinton when we need him?
July 30th, 2011 on 9:03 am
Holub’s analysis is right-on-the-money. Boehner had his shot at statesmanship and blew it. When has legislation by blackmail ever been a sanctioned procedure? Excluding a very rare few Congressmen, where were these supposed “fiscal conservatives” when George W. Bush was pushing tax breaks for the wealthy and invading two sovereign nations without thinking about how he would pay for his lame-brained adventures? Idiots all, these right-wing phony-baloney fiscal jihadists. A pox on them and their houses.
July 30th, 2011 on 9:08 am
I think the Liberal Left can kiss their ass goodbye. What a socialistic bunch of idiots. Where is their Icon Al Gore? What a stupid position we have found ourselves in? Nothing but spend, spend and more spend. Time to tame the kitty!
July 30th, 2011 on 10:07 am
Yes – the $1.5 trillion spent on the Iraq and Afganistan wars prior to 2009 is entirely the fault of the Liberal Left.
July 30th, 2011 on 10:22 am
Well, we can agree on one thing – it is a stupid position we find ourselves in. This is a fake crisis manufactured by the Republicans to try and damage the President by making the economy worse. There is no crisis, the United States is not broke. We’re never going to have a balanced budget with 10% unemployment. But the President was negotiating a balanced approach to reduce the deficit by over $4 trillion dollars with spending cuts and elimination of tax loopholes the rich and mega corporations don’t need. But Boehner bailed because a majority of Republicans in Congress wouldn’t support, but it could have passed with Republican and Democratic support. The Republican idea of “shared sacrifice” is to stick it to the poor & elderly while protecting their wealthy and corporate masters.
August 9th, 2011 on 12:03 am
Now that is real helpful Ramsey. We can be sure to use that in the elementary school economics class.
July 30th, 2011 on 9:12 am
Maybe if the President had ever offered publicly ANY “plan”, there would be something with which to negotiate. He’s afraid to tell the American public his far-left ideas for resolving this crisis….which will be nothing but “tax the rich”.
July 30th, 2011 on 9:13 am
Another thing to share. Born in the 40′s and growing up a normal kid seemed great! To look back now and see how this country has destroyed our way of life is appalling! It has always been greed.
July 30th, 2011 on 10:27 am
I always find it shocking how comfortable people are with insulting and verbally attacking others based on their party line.
I am an American. I am a mother or 2 small children left-leaning Democrat now living in a conservative upstate NY farming hamlet. My father is a Tea Party Activist, fundamental Christian fiscal conservative Republican. And I am my father’s daughter. We are close. It is possible to believe there is more than one way to get to the same place. This is the power of Democracy. The power of compromise. The power is in our differences not our similarities. How could we find the best budget if we were myopic and looked at it from only one direction?
The checks and balances is what made our country great and historically prevented human vices and zealotry from poisoning the spirit and freedom of America.
I personally find the fear and hostility more of an appalling threat than the political system. I do not see “Big Government” as a government that spends on entitlements for it’s people and puts in place safe guards for the American Consumer and citizen. “Big Government” in my opinion is a theocratic society that is led by a secular religious group legislating our private lives and leaving neighbors to fend for themselves. I am more threatened when our representatives (Republican or Democrat they ALL represent me) are playing “chicken” to gain political points to get our country out of the hands of those “socialist bunch of idiots”. Someone needs to look up “socialism” in the dictionary and do some comparisons.
The conservative base seems to be easily influenced by passionate pundits that simplistically characterize me and my family as “liberals destroying our great land.” Really? Last I checked with the IRS, I am a liberal and consuming Capitalist putting more than Wall Street into our economy for its growth and prosperity.
Bob, I can relate to your anger and need to blame. My children are little and I want a prosperous future for them. Easier to point fingers at the “name calling haters” than work together for our common goals.
The end of our country is not just another Democratic President, who DID NOT stand up to his promise of change anyway. (Obama care? Are you kidding? I have seen no relief , in fact my insurance rates are now higher in the last year. And have you checked the NYSE index? Blue Cross Blue Shield Association has gone up from $51 to $67 per share since Medical Insurance reform.) “Obamacare” is rhetoric to get the people to be afraid so that they will back the politicians aspirations to power. Even worse than that is the rhetoric of hope and change. We are all angry about this mess.
Our country has survived many of Democratic Presidents and even prospered under them. We will survive this one too. The end of our way of life is when the democratic process collapses, and our representatives can no longer exercise diplomacy through negotiations. For the good of all of the people all of the time. Not just Tea Party activists.
July 30th, 2011 on 10:34 am
Hugh, you’re dreaming if you think that Nancy Pelosi would have let 90 members of the House Democrat caucus, or even half that number, vote for a John Boehner bill.
I do admit…if you claim that Democrats were willing to buck Nancy Pelosi and vote with the House GOP in large numbers on anything, it does make it easier to criticize John Boehner…which was probably the point of this article all along.
July 30th, 2011 on 11:19 am
The most unkind (and true) thing I can say about Ms Pelosi is she is irrelevant now. She is getting back what she did to the GOP….but one hopes that there are enough House Dems who can risk opposing some of their party’s left-wing zealots to balance what Boehner might lose. If not….well….some new faces will be needed in DC from those districts whose representatives did not represent their constitutents.
July 30th, 2011 on 12:56 pm
I agree with everything you just said—except one. I can say plenty of unkind things about Nancy Pelosi and the way she ran the House. But, you’re right—there’s no point in that now. She’s irrelevant now—thank goodness.
July 30th, 2011 on 10:38 am
Please link to your past articles criticizing former Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her nonpartisanship. Or, better yet, the ones lauding her for reaching out to the Republicans when they were in the minority…with examples of her nonpartisan behavior while the Democrats held the House.
July 30th, 2011 on 10:39 am
Shasbot—dear readers, please mentally delete the letters “non” from the last word in the first sentence of my last comment.
July 30th, 2011 on 12:41 pm
It’s a little difficult to be nonpartisan when the opposition votes lockstep in opposing everything. The Rethuglicans votes 100% together in opposition, Speaker Pelosi had difficulty getting 90% of the Dems to agree on something. I’ve always liked Ms. Pelosi, and look forward to her getting the Speaker’s gavel back Jan. 2013.
July 30th, 2011 on 9:52 pm
“It’s a little difficult to be nonpartisan…”
This is especially true for a partisan. I am far more suspicious of anyone who actively cheers on one or the other political party than I am someone who merely channels most of their resistance towards one of them. The minute you start waving flags for your party of choice, Democrat or Republican, your opinions can much more easily be written off as noise. If you haven’t learned by now that one party is hypocritical and the other is just plain stupid, you probably never will.
July 30th, 2011 on 12:57 pm
Rethuglicans? Oh, how cute. OK—you have earned a cookie! :)
July 31st, 2011 on 6:31 am
When a group of people take the US economy hostage, threaten to repudiate the good faith and word of the US Government ton honor its debt until they get their way, “thugs” as in Rethuglicans, is about the most polite term I can use for them. Since 1962 Congress has raised the debt limit 74 times – including 18 times under Saint Ronnie Reagan. What’s different this time? The cost of interest on the debt as a percentage of GDP is currently much less than it was during the Reagan, Bush Sr. & Clinton administrations.
August 9th, 2011 on 12:10 am
And with the Supreme Court Case; “Citizen United” they will be Rethuglicans with canons! The Independent voter will rise exponentially in the next 9 months as I predicted it would between 2006 and 2008. The irony is that politics is adhering to the free market economy theories and the Elephants do not like it.
July 30th, 2011 on 1:35 pm
From what I can see, the latest Boehner plan cuts about 900 billion over ten years, with the majority of the cuts on the back end of the ten year period, that, by the way, is not binding on new congressional bodies. Do you really think these drunk with power politicians will cut spending? Ha! Meanwhile the 1.5-2.0 trillion dollar deficit spending continues to take place year after year. It cuts absolutely nothing. The Dems offer up tax hikes and repealing of some tax loopholes (that may stagnate the economy even more) and similar back-ended cuts that will never, ever take place. Do you really believe that any revenue increase will actually be used to pay off the debt? Right. Politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, will spend it and demand more and more. There ain’t a lick of a difference in them when it comes to spending our money and consolidating their power. The Bullsh!+ Meter is pegged.
Only in Washington, where budget items get increased automatically by 7-8% annually, can not raising a budget item by that amount be scored as a budget cut. What kind of accounting math is that? The kind that will eventually completely destroy our country.
The only compromise that needs to take place is that the left and right minded populace need to pair up and run all of these scoundrels out of Washington before it is to late and demand fiscal accountability from newly elected representatives. As divided as our elected officials and the media have made our citizens, that is unlikely to happen.
From what I understand, in addition to the 15 trillion that we are in the hole, there are about 60 trillion dollars worth of unfunded mandates; the entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare/Medicade. We need to get serious about this, don’t you think? Time is running out.
I may not have all the numbers exactly right, but the bottom line is that we’re (our country) screwed unless these knuckleheads get it together and fast. If they don’t, kiss the ‘ol USA, as we know it, goodbye.
I’m not holding my breath.
July 30th, 2011 on 7:45 pm
I’m just amazed by how much the Repubs. , T-partiers, and all the rest of the motley crew on the hill talk about balancing the budget and welfare reform, social security reform, and medicare/medicaid reform. Where is all this talk about reform and “trim” the budget issues when it comes to the ENTITLEMENTS that all the house and senate members get? They invariably slip in their pay raises in the dead of night and never raise a voice about THEIR ENTITLEMENTS. Like so many seniors I live on my social security checks and my state retirement…and thank god I have that, and am willing to continue working part-time to keep my head above water….BUT I’M NOT WILLING TO BEND TO EITHER SIDE WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT CUTTING OUR BENEFITS AND DON’T SAY A DAMN THING ABOUT TRIMMING THE FAT AROUND THEIR OWN WALLETS. They get tax-payer funded, lifetime medical care and pensions and that’s more than any of their constituents will EVER see.
July 30th, 2011 on 8:29 pm
It would be a lot more fun to watch this if I didn’t know that, regardless of outcome, the rich will be just fine and the poor will be getting their accounts serviced once again.
August 9th, 2011 on 5:37 am
Once the left is willing to act like private capital is private property (instead of a “National Resource” to be mined and controlled) and that it helps the economy and our overall way of life, things can start to grow again. As long as there is the impression that Obama, Reid, Kerry, Frank, Hoyer, and Pelosi see investors as an untapped resource, that private capital is going to be kept on the sidelines and not used. All 1 1/2 Trillion Dollars of it.
That’s why they love the “us vs. them” rhetoric. It works to get the black vote because whitey is holding out on “the community”; it works for the Hispanic vote because “they” just want to deport everybody; and it works for the splinter groups when the entrepreneur is villianized and compared to the Merrill Lynch guy with the $10,000 trash can.
Boehner had no chance to compromise because there was nothing to compromise to. Reid and Obama offered nothing. If the Republicans are so baseless in not trusting Reid and Obama to write tax policy, then how come after 2+ years of hope and change is GE still not paying income tax but they want more from all of us? Clinton said he was only hitting the rich too, and he went all the way down to the $38,000 level. So don’t ask us to trust these clowns when their aim is power and not prosperity.