Like many of you, I have been filled with dread thinking about the upcoming negotiations over the fiscal cliff and the risk to cuts in SS or Medicare (Medicaid is supposedly off the table). But in a one on one interview with Stephen Moore where Boehner dickishly spills the beans on what I'm sure BO thought were off the record talks, we get 3 reasons for the dread to be replaced with resolve and a fighting spirit, even if it means challenging the WH:
1. Obama is at least not oblivious to the underlying cause of the Medicare problem we're facing:
The president's insistence that Washington doesn't have a spending problem, Mr. Boehner says, is predicated on the belief that massive federal deficits stem from what Mr. Obama called "a health-care problem." Mr. Boehner says that after he recovered from his astonishment—"They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system"—he replied: "Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with ObamaCare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem." He repeated this message so often, he says, that toward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: "I'm getting tired of hearing you say that."
This is good to hear and, helps explain this reuters article claiming the WH wants to broaden the medicare debate into a healthcare debate:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
2. Once Obama has put a concession on the table, its not beyond him to pull it back:
Why has the president been such an immovable force when it comes to cutting spending? "Two reasons," Mr. Boehner says. "He's so ideological himself, and he's unwilling to take on the left wing of his own party." That reluctance explains why Mr. Obama originally agreed with the Boehner proposal to raise the retirement age for Medicare, the speaker says, but then "pulled back. He admitted in meetings that he couldn't sell things to his own members. But he didn't even want to try."
We can't be fatalistic about the Chained-CPI offer and instead need to mobilize for its defeat. Its obviously the big get that republicans have in their sights, so we need to make it unsellable to a good chunk of Democratic senators, which will force Obama to pull it back.
3. John Boehner is already getting wobbly on the debt ceiling and seems to be moving the debate onto the seuquester:
The Republicans' stronger card, Mr. Boehner believes, will be the automatic spending sequester trigger that trims all discretionary programs—defense and domestic. It now appears that the president made a severe political miscalculation when he came up with the sequester idea in 2011.
This is good because it has an outcome that's not apocalyptic, i.e. if an agreement on tax increases and spending cuts isn't reached, a likely possibility, this is an imaginable solution, unlike default.
So we're starting to get a map of the playing field, and as long as the two sides remain adamant on what should replace the sequester, we're likely headed for the sequester to become the law. But the key is to pressure Obama to stick to his demand that tax increases be a good part of the package to replace the sequester, because thats effectively a deal breaker for the GOP. They're so hellbent on not making anymore concessions on taxes that ONCE AGAIN we won't have to deal with the concessions on social insurance that Obama is capable of making.