We always seem to be in the middle of an election campaign, but I checked the calendar carefully and am almost sure that no president, senator, congressman or governor has to face the voters during the next several weeks.
That’s not, however, the impression that one gets from much of the commentary on the “Fiscal Cliff”. (Hasn’t somebody claimed a trademark on that phrase yet?) Reading the agonized or shrilly defiant groans on the Right and the triumphant screeches on the Left, the natural inference is that not only are elections imminent but that they will turn on the single issue of whether “the rich” (vernacular for “people who make more money than” whoever is talking) ought to be smacked with higher marginal income tax rates. The consensus is that the Republican Party is hopelessly out of step on that question and will be severely punished for its recalcitrance.
Those conservative pundits who haven’t thrown up their hands in despair are mostly either excoriating the GOP leadership in Congress for its failure to do something a year and a half ago to forestall the Cliff or devising ever more convoluted and implausible strategies to look blameless when the country plunges over it.
At the risk of sounding blasé, might I suggest that it’s a long, long while from now to November 4, 2014, and that what happens on that day will depend much more on the totality of the next 23 months than on public perceptions of the next 23 days?
The first priority for Republicans should be the good of the country, not the allocation of blame. On that score, although the effects of falling off the “Cliff” would be bad, they would be less dire than the President’s preferred course, namely, a huge tax increase on top of the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, accompanied by new “stimulus” spending, no changes to entitlements and no actual spending reductions except on national defense. In both scenarios, a recession is likely, and America’s no-longer-so-long-term fiscal imbalances won’t be addressed. The difference is that the Obama plan will make the recession more expensive and the imbalances worse.
I’ve suggested before that the GOP should announce its willingness to acquiesce in any Presidential proposal that will in fact reduce deficits meaningfully. It’s now evident, of course, nothing like that will be forthcoming. In the alternative, why not have the House pass a simple extension of the current tax rates plus an alternative to the automatic “sequestration” cuts in defense spending and a mild first installment of entitlement reform? The Senate will initially ignore it, but the House can keep trying. Quite a few Democratic Senators, a number of them up for reelection in 2014, represent states where spending reductions are popular and tax increases aren’t. Eventually they may decide that minimizing economic pain is better for their own futures than maximizing the Obamis’ ability to crow over humiliated political enemies.
No doubt the “stubborn”, “hostage taking” Republicans would have to endure verbal sticks and stones. The temptation to give in to an inflexible President, in the hope that he will then be burdened with sole responsibility for the consequences of his own folly, will be severe. But that is Obama-like thinking. The honorable course is to do all one can to enact helpful, or at least less harmful, policies. That is also, unless the American public has radically changed character over the past few years (in which case nothing can be done anyway), the most likely route to electoral success.
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