Where’s the Beef in the Debt Limit Buns?
According to this Tatler article, the Boehner plan lacks sufficient support in the House to pass. That is quite understandable. There is a dearth of substance in reports on the Boehner “plan,” which appears to be little more than a road map to something perhaps good — drawn with a dull and broad magic marker between two points on a very small globe. Here is a summary from Speaker Boehner’s office. It is so amorphous that it could mean, and result in, just about anything.
Despite whatever procedural tricks the plan may offer, and there may actually be something concrete in the final legislative language, there is simply no way short of a constitutional amendment to bind future congresses and presidents. House and Senate rules are up for grabs at every new congress and they often change.
Passage by the Congress of a balanced budget amendment is one of the sweeteners. However, under Article V of the Constitution, it takes more than the Congress (by 2/3 vote in both houses) to approve an amendment to the Constitution: for any amendment to become part of the Constitution it must also be ratified by 3/4 of the states, i.e., by thirty-eight of them. No reliable assurances can be given by anyone that 3/4 of the states will ratify such an amendment or when they might do so. It’s a silly gamble and no better than a pig in a poke to be opened and examined later rather than before buying it. The pig may be dead and rotten, but if so that’s tough.
The House has powers it has not exercised well. It can pass separate and specific appropriations bills for each agency and department. In doing so, it can deny such funding as a majority in the House may agree. The Senate can refuse to pass a budget for, for example, the EPA because it does not provide adequate funding to kill “dirty” energy generation or for any agency involved in implementation of ObamaCare because it does not provide adequate funding for the care of sacred cows. If that happens, or if the Senate passes such appropriations but the President vetoes them, the agencies get no funding at all. Tough. I suggested how to do this last November, just after the congressional elections during which the Republicans won a big majority in the House. No traction.
The notion that something must be done, the Boehner plan is something so the Boehner plan must be done is a foolish substitute for getting to work. So is blathering. I had rather see a clean increase in the debt limit valid only for one year, or even a default, than the foolish substitutes now being offered as solutions.
Well, no. No clean raising of the debt ceiling. This is the only leverage the House has, and I expect them to get something in exchange for it. There needs to be at least a modicum of cuts. I do not expect a great deal, but get something. The GAO has a list of useless expenditures, hundreds of billions of dollars worth. At least go down that list and clear a bunch out. Sen. Coburn has a good plan, too. Get. Something.
It is not enough to win elections. You actually have to DO something. Show me you can DO something.
Furthermore, let’s not be having this argument next year, too, during the election. The Dems can spin this. They cannot spin the economy.
We would get something — important — for a one year only “clean” increase, as I suggested here.
As our beloved President would say, “if not now, when?”
I haven’t seen anything better yet and don’t expect to.