John Boehner's Wiliness

I am not personally acquainted with John Boehner, though I laid eyes on him once. I do not really know Eric Cantor either – though we met in passing in April, 2009 when I was in DC promoting my book Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift. And I have never met Paul Ryan or Mike Pence.

Moreover, I am strongly inclined to fear that they will betray us in the aftermath of November. The Republicans in Congress do have a track record, after all. If the Democrats have a propensity for adding new social programs, their opponents have a no less powerful aptitude for voting to pay for them. It was not for nothing that Bob Dole was once derided as “the tax-collector of the welfare state.”

Like a man about to embark on a second marriage, I am nonetheless inclined to let hope triumph over experience and to entertain the possibility that this time it might be different. When a Democratic pundit such as The Washington Post‘s Ruth Marcus charges that the Republican opposition to Obama is “irresponsible,” it really does give one hope.

The event that caused Marcus to rise up in high dudgeon was a speech that John Boehner delivered in Cleveland on Tuesday, in which he attacked the latest “stimulus” bill, called for President Obama to submit to Congress “an agressive spending reduction package,” warned against allowing tax increases to take effect that would fall heavily on small businesses, pressed for an immediate repeal of the healthcare bill provision requiring businesses to issue a 1099 every time that they spent $600 or more, and called for the President to fire Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers. Twelve times, Marcus lamented, Boehner used the phrase “job-killing” – “as in ‘job-killing tax hikes,’ ‘job-killing bills,’ ‘job-killing agenda,’ ‘job-killing federal regulations.'” This is, she charged, “bumper-sticker politics, not a real economic plan.”

Boehner’s speech was shocking, indeed. It might lead one to think that we are in the middle of an election campaign and that the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives is intent on distilling for the voters what the party that controls both houses of Congress and the Presidency has most egregiously done wrong. It might be taken to suggest that he intends to offer voters a choice, not an echo; and though Boehner’s speech was not a plan, it does suggest that he has one.

Ruth Marcus is thoughtful and often worth reading, but when it comes to economics she is completely out of her depth.

She has not yet figured out what nearly everyone by now recognizes: that the so-called “stimulus” bill passed in 2009 failed ignominiously and that no amount of “stimulus” will get us out of the difficulties we now face. Manipulating consumption patterns will do us no good, for underconsumption is not at the heart of the current crisis. If the private sector is loath to hire, it is because everything that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama have done has contributed to a profound sense of uncertainty regarding the future.

The “stimulus” bill was aimed at stabilizing public-sector employment in the states and localities, and it was accompanied by a massive increase in federal employment and a no less massive increase in size of the national debt. Businessmen are not stupid. They know that the bill will soon come due. They plan ahead – that is their forte – and they are currently planning for a time when taxes and interest rates will be much higher. In these regards, they rightly calculate, the healthcare bill will make things much, much worse, and the same can be said for the incomprehensible, 2000-page financial regulation bill recently enacted. When John Boehner speaks of “job-killing” measures, he is singing to an increasingly large choir.

Witness the remarks delivered by Intel CEO John Otellini at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum on Monday evening. High taxes, the prospect of higher taxes on corporations and investors, and out-of-control regulation threaten to strangle the recovery, turn the downturn that began in 2008 into a double-dip recession, and rob this country of its technological edge – and the only way out of the mess that we are in is to roll back the healthcare reform; cut public-sector spending at the local, state, and national levels ruthlessly; pare entitlements; and reduce taxes and regulation. Within a liberal democracy, the task of the Opposition is to identify what is defective in the policies of those in power and to rally the public in such a manner as to force a reversal of course. This is their responsibility, and Boehner and his associates seem to be intent on living up to its demands.

I am particularly heartened by Boehner’s call for the President to fire Geithner and Summers. It suggests a certain wiliness on his part. As I noted recently, in a post entitled The Rats Begin Leaving Obama’s Sinking Ship, it was reported in late September, 2009 that Geithner and Summers “had almost no say in policy decisions” and that they complained to friends in the financial community that Obama “is acting as if he has a blank check to do what he wants, while ignoring the longterm costs of his policies.” I speculated at the time that some of Obama’s economic advisors would in due course jump ship; and, as I pointed out in the post mentioned above, some have now done so. But Geithner and Summers are not among them.

What I especially like about what Boehner was up to in his attack on Geithner and Summers is that he is putting pressure on the administration at a sore point. President Obama could defend his advisors by saying that none of this was due to them and that he had disregarded their advice regarding the consequences of his policies. But that would not do him or his party any good. It would be admission of irresponsibility on their part. Alternatively, he could fire Geithner and Summers, but that would also do the President and his party harm, for it would be an admission that his economic policy is a failture. Finally, he – or his hapless Vice-President – could try to blunt Boehner’s criticism by once again attacking George W. Bush and by once again claiming that recovery is just around the corner, and this is the option now being pursued. But it, too, is a loser. “Who are you going to believe?” the Republicans can ask. “Joe Biden and Barack Obama or your own lying eyes?”

Moreover, every bit of controversy of this sort that erupts between now and the first Tuesday in November serves to nationalize the election by reminding voters of the consequences of what the Democrats in the House and Senate have done since 2008. As Michael Bennett, a Democrat who was appointed last year to represent Colorado in the Senate, confessed last Saturday, “We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet and, in my view we have nothing to show for it.”

I do hope that John Boehner keeps turning up the heat.