After this week, the steps for Speaker John A. Boehner will grow progressively harder in his budget minuet with Democratic adversaries.
But there’s little disputing that he has moved deftly to this point.
What once shaped up as a week of desultory brinksmanship over a potential government shutdown has been largely drained of suspense. The White House and Senate Democrats are quibbling over the details and duration of the two-week spending extension that House Republican leaders have proposed, but they have embraced its fundamental elements.
Mr. Boehner helped create the suspense by rejecting, to huzzahs from fervent Republican freshmen, a Democratic proposal to temporarily extend current spending levels. “Read my lips, we’re going to cut spending,” he said.
Then he tamped it down when House leaders revealed the short-term cuts they were insisting on. The $4 billion list of expenditures had either been hit by Mr. Obama’s own budget or been abandoned by former champions in the bipartisan flight from “earmark” projects.
None of that resolves looming disputes over spending for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year, over the 2012 budget, over increasing the debt limit or over long-term solutions to swelling deficits. It could prove to be the last sweet spot that mollifies Mr. Boehner’s caucus, the Senate and the White House at the same time.
But for a process in which success can become self-reinforcing, Mr. Boehner’s initial dexterity represents a case of so far, so good.
Lessons Learned
Barely two months into his speakership, the Republican from Ohio has the advantage of his experience as one of Newt Gingrich’s lieutenants. Those mid-1990s Republican revolutionaries considered themselves at odds with President Bill Clinton, and with their party’s more pragmatic Senate caucus led by Bob Dole of Kansas.
“They wanted to balance the budget, but being loved was more important to them,” Mr. Boehner told the author Elizabeth Drew in “Showdown,” her account of the Gingrich-Clinton battle. “They wanted to do what they’d done all these years — cut a deal.”
Yet Mr. Boehner saw Republicans lose control of the debate over a government shutdown — and with it the 1996 presidential election.
Now he’s seeking to cut a deal, and winning plaudits from Democrats. He “seems to be taking the lesson from Gingrich’s missteps in 1995,” said Howard Paster, former head of Congressional relations for Mr. Clinton.
Mr. Boehner himself hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a shutdown. That might raise Tea Party suspicions that he was surrendering leverage.
But his leadership team has repeatedly emphasized its goal of avoiding any disruption in services. Now that possibility appears to have been delayed at least two weeks, with minimal turbulence.
“Boehner is advancing the views and values of the conference he leads in a steady and responsible way,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who in the past has been at odds with him.
Feeling the Pressure
House Republicans expressed their values in proposing to cut $61 billion from current spending levels through the rest of the 2011 fiscal year. However skillfully Mr. Boehner negotiates, no one expects Mr. Obama or Senate Democrats to accept that level of reduction.
That $61 billion list would take aim at the education and infrastructure priorities that Mr. Obama calls critical for “winning the future” — and, Democrats insist, would weaken an already weak job market. It’s nearly twice as big as House Republican leaders initially proposed, before retreating under pressure from the right.
There’s little reason to expect those pressures on Mr. Boehner to let up.
“I’m not going to give him a grade,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a member of the Democratic leadership. “The real test will come down the road when the hard-liners insist on making cuts that not only Democrats but the American people consider unpalatable.”
Consider the words of Mr. Gingrich himself. Currently exploring a 2012 Republican presidential bid that would require Tea Party support, he is warning against retreat.
“Another shutdown of the federal government is not an ideal result,” he wrote in The Washington Post over the weekend. “But for House Republicans, breaking their word would be far worse.”
That’s why the threat of a shutdown has only receded, not disappeared. Mr. Boehner must dance, at once, with the independent voters who gave Republicans the House majority and the conservatives who gave him the speaker’s gavel. If he loses balance, others, like the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, could cut in.
“Keep an eye on Cantor,” said Norman Ornstein, an expert on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute. “Boehner is.”
But there’s little disputing that he has moved deftly to this point.
What once shaped up as a week of desultory brinksmanship over a potential government shutdown has been largely drained of suspense. The White House and Senate Democrats are quibbling over the details and duration of the two-week spending extension that House Republican leaders have proposed, but they have embraced its fundamental elements.
Mr. Boehner helped create the suspense by rejecting, to huzzahs from fervent Republican freshmen, a Democratic proposal to temporarily extend current spending levels. “Read my lips, we’re going to cut spending,” he said.
Then he tamped it down when House leaders revealed the short-term cuts they were insisting on. The $4 billion list of expenditures had either been hit by Mr. Obama’s own budget or been abandoned by former champions in the bipartisan flight from “earmark” projects.
None of that resolves looming disputes over spending for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year, over the 2012 budget, over increasing the debt limit or over long-term solutions to swelling deficits. It could prove to be the last sweet spot that mollifies Mr. Boehner’s caucus, the Senate and the White House at the same time.
But for a process in which success can become self-reinforcing, Mr. Boehner’s initial dexterity represents a case of so far, so good.
Lessons Learned
Barely two months into his speakership, the Republican from Ohio has the advantage of his experience as one of Newt Gingrich’s lieutenants. Those mid-1990s Republican revolutionaries considered themselves at odds with President Bill Clinton, and with their party’s more pragmatic Senate caucus led by Bob Dole of Kansas.
“They wanted to balance the budget, but being loved was more important to them,” Mr. Boehner told the author Elizabeth Drew in “Showdown,” her account of the Gingrich-Clinton battle. “They wanted to do what they’d done all these years — cut a deal.”
Yet Mr. Boehner saw Republicans lose control of the debate over a government shutdown — and with it the 1996 presidential election.
Now he’s seeking to cut a deal, and winning plaudits from Democrats. He “seems to be taking the lesson from Gingrich’s missteps in 1995,” said Howard Paster, former head of Congressional relations for Mr. Clinton.
Mr. Boehner himself hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a shutdown. That might raise Tea Party suspicions that he was surrendering leverage.
But his leadership team has repeatedly emphasized its goal of avoiding any disruption in services. Now that possibility appears to have been delayed at least two weeks, with minimal turbulence.
“Boehner is advancing the views and values of the conference he leads in a steady and responsible way,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, who in the past has been at odds with him.
Feeling the Pressure
House Republicans expressed their values in proposing to cut $61 billion from current spending levels through the rest of the 2011 fiscal year. However skillfully Mr. Boehner negotiates, no one expects Mr. Obama or Senate Democrats to accept that level of reduction.
That $61 billion list would take aim at the education and infrastructure priorities that Mr. Obama calls critical for “winning the future” — and, Democrats insist, would weaken an already weak job market. It’s nearly twice as big as House Republican leaders initially proposed, before retreating under pressure from the right.
There’s little reason to expect those pressures on Mr. Boehner to let up.
“I’m not going to give him a grade,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a member of the Democratic leadership. “The real test will come down the road when the hard-liners insist on making cuts that not only Democrats but the American people consider unpalatable.”
Consider the words of Mr. Gingrich himself. Currently exploring a 2012 Republican presidential bid that would require Tea Party support, he is warning against retreat.
“Another shutdown of the federal government is not an ideal result,” he wrote in The Washington Post over the weekend. “But for House Republicans, breaking their word would be far worse.”
That’s why the threat of a shutdown has only receded, not disappeared. Mr. Boehner must dance, at once, with the independent voters who gave Republicans the House majority and the conservatives who gave him the speaker’s gavel. If he loses balance, others, like the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, could cut in.
“Keep an eye on Cantor,” said Norman Ornstein, an expert on Congress at the American Enterprise Institute. “Boehner is.”
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