Not many years ago, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives had a Republican speaker and a Democratic majority. Similar situations have occurred in other places.
The present Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, John Boehner, may have tried much harder than it appears to bring about a solution to the debt limit crisis. But he failed because he adhered to the Hastert Rule, which gives too much power to a small minority of extremists. In the end, he did not put the country before his own career interests.
The outlines of a possible settlement suggest the stage is being set for new crises over the budget, sequestration, and debt limit. There is a possible provision that the departments will have little room to maneuver within the sequestration limits imposed upon them.
There is also a possibility that the Republican extremists in the House will demand a rule that the Secretary of the Treasury be stripped of power to avoid a default. What kind of people demand such rules???
The good of the country and its economy demand that we get off this destructive track that leads to crises every few months, and the best way to do it is to reorganize the House.
What is needed is a majority comprised of about 189 Democrats and at least thirty or more moderate or at least responsible Republicans. A majority is 218, but they need a few extra votes for breathing room. There are 200 Democrats in the House, but as many as eleven have shown that they fear crossing the Tea Party zealots.
Whether there are 30 responsible Republicans there who put the country first is an open question.
The speaker would have to be a Republican, perhaps someone like Peter King. Of late he sounds more reasonable than in the past, and he seemed genuinely shocked when members of his party refused to help his district when it was devastated by a mega-storm. Yet those same self-centered obstructionists got in line immediately when their districts had difficulties. King is a partisan and capable of low tricks, which should comfort other Republicans. Who can forget him standing on the White House lawn with a blue cup of beer on election day 2000 telling reporters that Bush would win over Gore because the Republican controlled the counting of votes.
I concluded something like this reorganization was needed a few months ago. Yesterday, two friends raised similar possibilities. One of them, Bob, actually raised the Pennsylvania precedent.
Because the press has a way of reporting that both sides are responsible for any given problem, it could be that most people have no idea how far irrational factors have taken over in the House of Representatives. The scholars Ornstein and Mann, seem to grasp this, but others, including the talking heads, do not seem to get it. Many still think our system is a perfect self-balancing mechanism.
If the House of Representatives is not fixed soon, economic growth will b damaged still more and interest rates are sure to rise more rapidly than they should. The long term status of the dollar as the international currency of choice could be endangered.
It may be too much to expect the average voter to grasp how much damage all this obstruction has done to the economy. There is a significant minority of voters that only see one thing: Obama is an African American and that bothers the hell out of them. The trouble is the Republicans understand that all this damage hurts Obama and is likely to reward them . After all, they were rewarded in 2011 for both obstruction and bringing down the nation's credit rating.