Debt Ceiling Battle

The next question is how big an increase will President Obama request? If it is on the smallish side, it might get approved more easily, but it may not be enough to see him through to November 6, 2012. He would then have to come back to Congress just before the next presidential elections and that would probably be a political mistake. For that reason, those inside the beltway are betting that it will have to be a large increase. That should make it even more difficult for the Tea Party and most of the rest of America to accept.

I am not sure that Mr. Boehner can pull it off, but I hope that he can wrestle things around so that we keep the increase as small as possible and leverage it as much as possible to get presidential agreement to the deep cuts in the 2012 budget that are necessary. It is important that we also continue to educate the public about the very real problems that face our economy. I suggest that Paul Ryan and his charts are on the right track, but we must stay alert to any and all attempts by liberals to play down the threat posed by our debt. Those efforts must be met head on with facts, not yelling. They must not be ignored as just being liberal trash talk that then stimulates equally stupid conservative trash talk.

The defunding of Obama Care is inevitably going to come up again in these negotiations, just as it did in the fight over the Continuing Resolution. I want to see Obama Care eliminated, and I do not mind seeing it included in the debt ceiling negotiations, but I do not want to see it made a real sticking point for the conservative side. How we get rid of Obama Care is important for a lot of reasons. No matter what conservatives think about it, a lot of Americans are still attracted, at least in part, to at least some of it's provisions. The very best solution I can imagine would be for the Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional. Perhaps Mr. Boehner could convince the President to expedite the Court's consideration of the issue as one of the prices that he has to pay for having the debt ceiling increased.

The debt ceiling is an important tactical engagement in a larger, far more important, strategic effort. The real task is getting America back to financial solvency. In order to accomplish that, we must make progress not only in the 2012 budget, but in at least a few after that one. In order to accomplish the goal of financial solvency, we must convince a majority of Americans that the path that we advocate is the right one for our country. All of these votes are tactically important, but they mean next to nothing if we do not get the bulk of this country thinking that the conservative path is the right one. We should not just yell louder than our opponent. We should continue to talk to the facts.