The debt ceiling fiasco

So what really happened in those discussions between president Obama and speaker Boehner? Did the GOP just refuse any increases in revenue as Obama portrays it? Did Obama change his position at the last minute to demand a big increase in revenue as Boehner says? Based upon past performance, I am inclined to believe Boehner rather than Obama. There have just been too many convenient political lies coming from Obama in the last three years to accept him as truthful. But more than history, there is the logic of the situation. Here the key is exactly what Boehner said. According to the Speaker, he had agreed to an increase of 800 billion dollars of revenue to be gotten from tax reform and enhanced enforcement. Those words are a major announcement from a GOP leader. He had agreed to higher revenue as well as big spending cuts. "Tax reform" that brings in 600 billion dollars or so is another way of saying higher taxes. True, the marginal rates would not go up and the revenue would come from taxes on groups that had gotten special treatment in the past from Congress, but these are tax increases nevertheless. If Boehner had just walked away from Obama (as the president claims) because he would not agree to tax increases, Boehner would not then go out and announce that he had agreed to certain tax increases. It would be like Obama falsely announcing that no deal could be reached but he had agreed during the negotiations to a 10% cut in social security. No sane politician would do that.

So what really happened? The truth is that Obama tried to take advantage of his own refusal to put forth his own plan. No one knows what the president's position is because he does not have one. There is no Obama plan for deficit reduction. Indeed, there is no Democrat plan for reducing the deficit. All we have ever heard from Obama is glittering generalities, not details. Sure, there were items like tax changes to undo the break on corporate jets that Obama and the Democrats pushed through in the stimulus package, but those are tiny changes that do not amount to much. Obama never identified to the public how large a tax increase he sought. He never told America how big a spending cut he would accept and what it would consist of. Even yesterday the president spoke of cuts in discretionery and defense spending as one big blob for the entire next ten years. No one knows what that means. No one knows how those supposed cuts were going to be allocated.

The time has come for the GOP to refuse to speak to Obama further until he puts a detailed plan on the table in public. If he has ever had any intention to reach agreement, Obama has to have details by now, so putting forth a plan is no big effort. At the same time, the GOP leadership can speak to the more responsible Democrats, namely, Reid and Pelosi. (That is a sentence I never thought I would write -- imagine Reid and Pelosi and "responsible" in the same thought.) At least Reid and Pelosi have enough experience governing to understand that there is a method to negotiation that has to be followed. Last minute switches simply do not work when both sides have to agree.