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Politico...
John
Boehner’s ‘grand bargain’ - with
House GOP
By John Bresnahan, Jonathan Allen
& Jake Sherman
7/11/11
Speaker
John Boehner’s decision not to
“go big” on a debt-limit deal is the starkest demonstration yet of the
limits
of the Ohio Republican’s power.
The
internal GOP backlash against his
efforts to secure a package of $4 trillion in spending cuts and
revenue-raisers
revealed that Boehner sometimes is little more than the first among
equals —
capable of synthesizing Republican sentiments but unwilling to drive
them.
Tax
hikes, by any name, are a
nonstarter for a party that forged its brand on the mantra of lower
taxes and
less government, and Boehner’s willingness to talk rates with President
Barack
Obama — particularly in the context of House Majority Leader Eric
Cantor’s
(R-Va.) refusal to do so — raised eyebrows within his conference. The
uproar
among Republicans, on and off Capitol Hill, forced Boehner to back away
from
the “grand bargain,” setting up a testy White House meeting where
little was
accomplished Sunday night.
“It’s
crazy to think the speaker was
considering a trillion [dollars] in tax increases. After all, we’re the
anti-tax party,” said one veteran Republican lawmaker close to
leadership.
“Cantor brought him, the economy and our party back from the abyss.
Cantor is
strengthened, clearly. And it’s another example of the speaker almost
slipping
beyond the will of the GOP conference.”
Details
of the potential “big deal”
with President Barack Obama leaked before House members were briefed on
the
broad outlines of any agreement. “That was a huge problem,”
acknowledged a top
House Republican aide. “Boehner got way out in front of where he should
have
been. He pulled back because he had to do so.”
Boehner’s
decision to tackle a “grand
bargain” in the first place was a risky move. He had to contend with
Republican
presidential hopefuls drawing lines in the sand, a tea-party-inspired
freshman
class that has a mistrust of the political establishment and the lofty
demands
of the party’s base.
It’s
tempting, and yet too facile, to
view Boehner’s constraints only through the lens of his relationship
with
Cantor.
But
it’s also impossible to assess
Boehner’s place within GOP circles and in negotiations with
Washington’s other
political leaders without considering Cantor, who has a penchant for
siding
with the hard-liners when Boehner plays the deal maker, curtailing
Boehner’s
freedom of operation.
Cantor
walked away from a round of
debt-limit talks led by Vice President Joe Biden when Democrats asked
Republicans to identify taxes they would be willing to raise in
exchange for
spending cuts of as much as $2.4 trillion over 10 years. Then Boehner
and his
top aides worked with Obama and senior White House advisers to try to
find a
sweet spot. Cantor and his top aides were then letting it be known on
Capitol
Hill that he was not supporting the large-scale deal, terming it a tax
hike —
with the implication that Cantor was plainly not with Boehner.
Read
the rest of the story with links
at Politico
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