So Congress reconvenes today, and the Bush tax-cut question is on the top of the list. It certainly looks like House Republican leader John Boehner blinked yesterday when he said:
If the only option I have is to vote for those at [$250,000] and below, of course I'm going to do that. But I'm going to do everything I can to fight to make sure that we extend the current tax rates for all Americans.
This surprised pretty much everybody, and apparently Robert Gibbs made the rounds of the morning shows just now trumpeting this as a key Democratic p.r. victory.
It's certainly an uncharacteristic folding of cards on the early side. On the other hand, Boehner can speak like this in the full knowledge that a package of cuts only for those households below $250,000 is never going to clear the (oh, this again) Senate. From today's Washington Post:
McConnell said Democrats have zero chance of passing Obama's plan in the Senate. He said not a single Republican would support it, leaving Democrats short of the 60 votes needed to cut off a filibuster.
"That's a debate we're happy to have. That's the kind of debate that unifies my caucus, from Olympia Snowe to Jim DeMint," McConnell said, citing the most liberal and most conservative Republicans in the Senate.
Assuming this is and remains true, then it doesn't really matter what Boehner says. He can play good cop all he wants, right? In fact, it makes the Republicans look good and reasonable: Hey, some of us were willing to back the president's plan. The problem was in the Senate, where the opposition came not just from Republicans. So don't look at us. This is even somewhat-to-mostly true, alas, because of the six Senate Democrats who want the tax cut to extend to all households.
I don't know where these six Democrats stand on the question of whether they'd support a below-250-only bill if that were the only vote placed before them. If they would not, then Obama's proposal is truly dead. If they would, then it has a chance if they can get one Republican to change.
How would that happen? It's a heavy lift. The only argument is that the GOP position of extensions for all increases the deficit by another $700 billion. So Obama would need to drive that home in the next seven weeks. That wouldn't thrill the liberals, but it's the only way to have a chance of winning the argument: Republicans want deficit reduction until it comes to the top 2%.
And if that doesn't work, then Obama might well be forced into a position where he has to sign an across-the-board extension. That can maybe be put off until after the election, but if it happens it will still be embarrassing.
And let's remember: if the Senate operated according to majority rule, none of this would be happening. There are easily 54 votes in the Senate for Obama's proposal, and if every Blue Dog in the House knew the Senate would pass it, enough of them would be going along so that this constituted "the Democratic position" and the vast majority of them would be going out and fighting to defend it. But Senate rules and only Senate rules make it impossible for a policy backed by 54% of senators and about the same percentage of House members, and the White House, to become law.
By the way, here is my New York Review of Books piece on the filibuster. Here's a little taste:
[S]ome founders—George Mason of Virginia among them—backed supermajority requirements, but many were suspicious of them. The Continental Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, had been run on the supermajority principle—most legislation needed the support of two thirds of the states, or nine out of thirteen, to pass—and the results were unsatisfying. James Madison acknowledged that "more than a majority" might be justifiable in limited instances but argued that requirements for a supermajority were open to a decisive objection:
In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule; the power would be transferred to the minority.
Well put, Jim.
