Continuing Resolution Compromise

Thank you John Boehner and Harry Reid. Assuming that you hold it together and pass the necessary legislation next week, I see yesterday's Continuing Resolution compromise to be exactly what we needed at this point in time. Although I am not a fan of Harry Reid, I give him full credit for his part in the process. I am a fan of John Boehner and I very much appreciate his management of the conservative side of this process. I thank the voters of this country for giving Boehner the necessary muscle to pull this off. I don't yet see any evidence that the President did much of anything that was useful.

Now that this minutia is hopefully behind us, we can go on to the real problems that face us - the 2012 budget and the debt ceiling. The two are inextricably linked, but the debt ceiling will need to be addressed before the inevitable budget brawl is decided. According to the people that watch this sort of thing, we will probably hit the debt ceiling sometime next month. No matter what any politician on either side of the aisle says, we will have to raise the debt ceiling. Not to do so would have catastrophic consequences both here and abroad. Period.

My presumption is that the more conservative politicians like Michelle Bachman will argue that we should "keep their feet to the fire" and refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Their argument will be that we have already borrowed more than we can afford. If the debt ceiling is raised, the Obama Administration will just go on spending and our problem will get worse. That is unfortunately true, but the real solution is to rein in spending not default on our debt. One of the very unfortunate reasons we need to borrow more is to get the money to pay the interest on our existing debt.

Messaging is very important in the debt ceiling fight. Conservatives should work hard, very hard, to do two things. First, keep the increase as small as possible. Make certain that we do not do anything to damage our fiscal reputation, but do not give President Obama any more money than absolutely necessary to accomplish that objective. Second, continue to educate the American public about the financial mess that this country is in. In the process of doing this, we need to stick to the facts and avoid hyperbole.

I recognize that folks like Bachman will take an extreme view in this discussion, but hopefully we can filter that stuff out of the discussion. It is the kind of theatre that she used when refusing to vote for the recent Continuing Resolution compromise while expressing her confidence that we would get an acceptable deal. In any case, the real fight is the budget fight and that is where we need to keep our focus. Michelle and her Tea Party friends will probably make much more sense in that one.