COMMENTARY

What’s this? Cooperation?

Today I rise in praise of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. They now have caved wisely, twice, to President Barack Obama.

If only they’ll keep blinking, they’ll win entitlement to a concession or two from Democrats.

If only they’ll keep blinking, the country actually could find itself in a pretty good place.

We could reap the benefits of a government budget deficit that is newly contained. We could reap the benefits of the liberation of our economy, which is aching to grow in housing, financial markets and business profits, if, sadly, not proportionately in employment.

We simply don’t have as much use for working people in this economy as we once did. Machines have gotten too smart in the Information Age.

So we must adapt. But first we must fashion a renewal of functioning politics, signals of which actually have begun to appear.


On New Year’s Day night, when Republicans caved on the fiscal cliff and gathered enough votes to let tax increases pass for incomes exceeding $400,000, I had a brief telephone conversation with my congressman.

That would be U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, fiery right-wing Republican who was en route at the time to the floor for a vote.

He was responding to my calling him out on Twitter, which he seems to monitor fairly religiously. I have found I can get through to a lot of people in publicly posted 140-character urgings.

Here’s what I was urging of Tim: Why don’t you Republicans, after we escape this cliff, go to the mat on spending cuts on sequestration issues, but not on the debt limit—thus not in any manner that imperils insanely our ability to pay our due bills, and keep our government functioning and our credit rating secure and our markets calm?

Let me talk to my leadership, he said.

Now, permit this aside: There was a time, a few years ago, when an elected member of Congress could both think for himself and talk independently.

Group-think and raging subservience to the vaunted “caucus” have given us Congress members who, like some working people in the modern economy, are no longer essential. We could get robots to say “aye” and “nay” according to the programming of the leadership.

It’s not just Griffin. I don’t mean to single him out.

And, yes, we seem to have something of an independent thinker and independent voter in this Tom Cotton of the 4th District. And, yes, he scares me half to death with his Ron Paul-ish absolutism, which, as Obama said in his inaugural address, must not be mistaken for principle.

So there you go. They’re danged if they do and danged if they don’t.

Back to the point: I heard nothing back from Griffin. But, 18 days later, I read with the rest of you the news accounts saying that the House Republican caucus had gone to a retreat and decided to do . . . well, kind of what I had urged of my congressman.

I’m fairly certain they were responding to their corporate underwriters, including the Koch brothers, who feared a market meltdown through default. No matter. Whatever works.

House Republicans said they would schedule a vote to raise the debt ceiling for three months. Thank goodness. No default.

They said they would then turn their spending-cut emphasis not to the deferred automatic cuts of sequestration, as I had suggested. Instead, more smartly, they would impose a debt-ceiling proviso that the U.S. Senate, which has not actually passed a budget since 2009, pass one by April 15.

That would let the Senate and House appoint conferees by which House spending cuts would be active on the negotiating table and an actual new budget would be fashioned.

Otherwise, by this provision, members of Congress would have their pay withheld until a budget got passed.

There is some constitutional question about whether that would amount to “varying” congressional pay, which is illegal.

But I don’t think holding up the distribution of pay is to “vary” that pay. It stays the same. You just don’t get it until you complete your assigned task.

Anyway, which member of Congress is going to sue?

And why hasn’t the Senate passed a budget since 2009? It’s because Majority Leader Harry Reid has sensed mischief from Republicans attaching amendments to force Democratic senators to cast votes that would be politically exploitable.

How have we functioned in the meantime? By “continuing resolutions,” which is congressional-speak for that handy cliché about kicking the can.

The can has been kicked enough. It’s time to hitch up our britches and do a budget encompassing a few hard compromises.


Delightfully, Democratic leaders of the Senate have responded affirmatively.

Sure, they can do a budget in three months, and will, they say.

But then there is this: U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, third in Democratic leadership, went on a Sunday talk show to say the Senate will put tax increases in its budget—closing loopholes benefiting the well-to-do, assessing the oil industry and collecting more from overseas corporate profits.

Republicans won’t like that. They think they’ve conceded on taxes enough. They think it’s time to do serious spending cuts. They understand that the Democrats have two bases of authority—the White House and the Senate—and they one, the House. They think they’ve ceded their two and now are entitled to their one.

I suspect, though, that they’ll need to cede once more, for additional tax revenue from high incomes and corporations. After that they will have every justification to extract some significant spending reductions that will gall liberal constituencies.

It’s only fair. It’s compromise. It’s functioning government. If we get that, watch the markets soar.

Elections have consequences. With a couple more rounds of reasoned budgetary concessions, the consequences can actually be quite good for all of us.

John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

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