Jim McTague of Barron’s focuses his latest “D.C. Current” column on Washington gridlock.
Ah, Washington! We have our own, twisted version of Isaac Newton’s famous third law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite inaction.
The Obama administration is hunkering down for two more years of gridlock, planning to give back to the congressional GOP pretty much what it has given the president since 2010 — little cooperation. Consequently, in light of a Republican budget proposal that strikes the administration as outlandish, there will be no serious movement toward tax reform, entitlement reform, or a bipartisan fiscal blueprint. The White House made this clear on March 17, in a deep-background briefing for 28 journalists after House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price, a Georgia Republican, released a spending blueprint that comes to balance in about eight years after slashing more than $5 trillion in outlays, largely by overturning the president’s signature health-insurance plan and partly privatizing Medicare. The Senate’s Republican-controlled Budget Committee trotted out a similar plan the next day; it aims to balance the budget in 10 years.
Administration spokesmen depict Price’s outline as crafted solely to appeal to the Republicans’ base, rather than a serious starting point for negotiations with the Democrats. This is pretty much the case. After President Barack Obama did an end run around the new, Republican-controlled Congress on immigration via a diktat of questionable legality, the GOP anticipated a year in which he wouldn’t play ball. So its budget proposal really is a political ad for 2016.
Obama, we journos were reminded by two administration spokesmen, won’t endorse cuts to any programs benefiting the middle and lower classes without commensurate increases in taxes on the wealthy. The White House message was that the GOP should clearly understand this by now. In other words, the uncompromising Republicans should have prepared a compromise satisfactory to the uncompromising Obama.
