President Obama: "It’s the Republican budget. That’s a pretty significant compromise.”
by digby
So the president went to FEMA today and laid down the gauntlet to the Republicans. Well, in a way. He called for a vote on the clean CR, indicating that he knows there are enough votes if only Boehner will allow it. And then he said this:
“I’m happy to talk to Republicans about anything related to the budget,” Obama said. “There’s not a subject that I am not willing to engage in, work on, negotiate and come up with compromises.” But, the president added, “We’re not going to negotiate under the threat of further harm to our economy and middle class families.”
Obama added that Democrats effectively already have compromised in the budget debate by agreeing to a budget bill that has lower spending levels reflecting Republican priorities. “It’s the Republican budget,” Obama said. “That’s a pretty significant compromise.”
This is true. But that's not all he said. Here, I'll let Chuck Todd, Andrea Mitchell and Chris Cilizza explain it to you. Here's their conversation right after the president spoke today:
Chuck Todd: ... I found a couple of things very interesting about the president seemed to go out of his way to emphasize. Number one, the Democrats have already compromised. This has been a case that they have been making a lot but it's not been a forward case, talking about that this is already a Republican budget, this is reflecting Republican priorities when it comes to spending levels and sequestration etc.
And then the idea that he is not willing to negotiate, in which he says "no, I'm perfectly willing to negotiate after the shutdown threat and the debt ceiling issue is no longer there," so he's trying to shift the rhetoric so it is not as the Republicans are trying to frame it as "hey, the president won't negotiate" well, the president pushing back on that saying hey, I'm willing to negotiate just not under these pre-conditions that Republicans want.
So I think it's notable that you see a different tone and a little bit different emphasis on this second week. It tells me that perhaps some of the Republicans talking points beating him up collectively on the idea that he's not willing to negotiate is something they thought they needed to push back on.
Andrea Mitchell: And Chris Cilizza, the logical negotiation would be to accept the sequester levels or something close to the sequester levels, for more than just 6 weeks. To accept the sequester levels going forward which is what Republicans want., and to put something on the table on entitlement reform which the president has already put on the table in his own budget. So to adjust that sequester level and the entitlement reforms to come up with some budget savings, long term budget savings that could get the Republicans off of their demand regarding Obamacare.
Chris Cilizza: Yeah, I think you're right there Andrea. I think Chuck is on to something in that the president ... you know, John Boehner just kept saying over the week-end "I want to have a conversation. Who ever heard of not negotiating" except I think the president and his team is aware that without context and the right push back there that is something that can gain some ground, which is John Boehner saying "look I'm being reasonable, I want to talk", Barack Obama saying , as you heard, look this the sequester is a compromise what's in place right now, if we just extended the sequester it would already be a compromise by Democrats, trying to reset the calculus there.
I continue to believe that this is about when and how the White House, if the want to --- they don't have to --- if they want to give John Boehner a way out here, whether it's Chained-CPI, whether in some form of entitlement reform, whether it's extending the sequester cuts beyond that six week window as you point out Andrea. John Boehner is in a position where he needs to get something to go back to the Republican house conference where he can say, "see, here's what I got. We fought we fought we fought and now's the time to give in." He can't do that without something on the White House end. Well, he could but he's not willing to do it yet.
I have no clue if they know anything. Probably not. But I have to say I'm a little bit shocked by Mitchell's notion that the Democrats might be required to not only give in on entitlements, but must also agree to extend the sequester cuts indefinitely. Up until now the village gossip has had it that the Dems would get a pullback on the sequester in exchange for entitlements cuts, not that they would have to throw permanent sequester cuts into the deal as well.
Let's hope Mitchell was confused about that because otherwise, the end result of this would be that Democrats adopt the GOP budget and agree to cuts to Social Security in exchange for keeping the government open and raising the debt ceiling. That means the hostage strategy will have worked out better than the Republicans ever could have imagined.
Update: I was on Majority Report this morning and Sam Sedar mused that the main the White House would want to achieve from all this is a procedural agreement that would preclude anyone using the debt ceiling in this manner in the future. I haven't head anyone else offer that as a possibility, but it certainly does make sense. This is the big issue as far as the WH is concerned. The problem, as always, would be what the Republicans would demand in return for their great sacrifice. I shudder to think ...
Update II: This is the procedural rule Sam was talking about:
Back in 1979, the Democratic House Speaker, Tip O’Neill, handed the unhappy job of lining up votes for a debt-ceiling raise to Representative Richard Gephardt, then a young Democratic congressman from Missouri. Gephardt hated this, and, realizing he’d probably get stuck with it again, consulted the parliamentarian about whether the two votes could be combined. The parliamentarian said they could. Thereafter, whenever the House passed a budget resolution, the debt ceiling was “deemed” raised.
The “Gephardt Rule,” as it became known, lasted until 1995, when the new House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, fresh from the Republican triumph of the 1994 midterms, recognized the same thing that Tea Party Republicans recognize today: The threat of default could be used to extort Democratic concessions. Gingrich abolished the Gephardt Rule, and within the year the government had shut down.
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