Speaker Boehner and President Obama (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)
On Sunday, the Washington Post published a detailed story about the arduous negotiations between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner last summer, trying to use the debt ceiling crisis manufactured by Republicans to forge a "grand bargain" on revenues and spending cuts.
At the core, the story confirms the basic outlines of the deal progressives were concerned about:
[T]he major elements of a bargain seemed to be falling into place: $1.2 trillion in agency cuts, smaller cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients, nearly $250 billion in Medicare savings achieved in part by raising the eligibility age. And $800 billion in new taxes.
But the part of the story that got the most attention early this week was this one line: "White House officials said this week that the offer is still on the table." That's the offer containing the Social Security
benefit cut in the form of a chained CPI and the
hike in the eligibility age for Medicare.
In an off-the-record briefing with reporters Tuesday, a White House official called that report "inaccurate."
What remained on the table, the official clarified, was the notion that there could be a deal. But instead of including the specific elements previously agreed upon by Obama and Boehner, any major deficit reduction measure considered going forward will have to more closely resemble a separate plan introduced by the president in the fall as part of his presentation to the congressional super committee charged with deficit reduction. [...]
The subsequent proposal that the president made to the super committee did not include the major entitlement reforms that Obama and Boehner had discussed. It also relied much more heavily on actual tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans.
At Tuesday's briefing, a senior administration official said the latter approach more closely resembled the concept of shared sacrifice that the president viewed as a pre-requisite for any future negotiations. The official also noted that events surrounding such negotiations had changed dramatically since last August, when lawmakers were firmly considering the prospect of a default on the nation's debt.
Events haven't necessarily changed that much, however. The House GOP has just introduced a budget that will potentially trigger a government shutdown threat, and in doing so completely rejected the agreed upon budget from the eventual August deal and the automatically triggered cuts that deal imposed. The sequestration— the “trigger” of $1.2 trillion in across the board defense and discretionary spending cuts—will coincide with a perfect storm at the end of this year: the expiration of the Bush tax cuts; the expiration of the payroll tax holiday, Medicare payments "doc fix," and unemployment benefits just negotiated last month; another debt ceiling hike. Another perfect storm that
will impel certain policy-makers (see:
Rep. Steny Hoyer) to use that crisis to attempt to forge another "grand bargain."
All of that will almost certainly end up being negotiated in the lame duck session of Congress, when there's the least amount of concern among policy-makers for being held accountable to voters. Which is precisely what Hoyer has been aiming for, and precisely why his efforts are so objectionable.
Much of how this plays out will of course depend on the elections. If tea party House members are wiped out, the GOP might be more willing to temper demands and accept some tax increases, but in return for the kinds of concessions the White House offered up the last time around. Once those kinds of concessions are made and once a negotiator "goes there," even if the concessions aren't accepted, they're never going to be off the table.
That's one of the key reasons to stop Hoyer in his tracks. Tell Steny Hoyer: Don't make any backroom deals that include cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits.