The Obama-Reid Gamble

The Obama-Reid Gamble

The dance we are watching this weekend is a very important moment in modern American history with big implications for how the executive and the legislative branches interact in the future.

The House Republicans have staked out a position that they can use their constitutional power of the purse to force the President to negotiate over key issues.  President Obama and Senate Democratic Leader Reid believe they can break the House Republicans and force them to reopen the government and pass a debt ceiling hike with no negotiations and no conditions.

Senate Republicans are split between a majority who want any deal that will end the pain and a militant minority who accept the conflict and pain as the price of forcing very large changes. Obscured to some extent by the focus on the partial government shutdown and the anxiety over the debt ceiling is the continuing failure of Obamacare and the endless stories about websites failing and people discovering higher rather than lower prices.

What is increasingly clear is that President Obama and Senator Reid have adopted a calculated strategy of trying to isolate and break the morale of the House Republican leadership. The President is faced with the danger that the conservative Republicans will learn how to use the power of the purse to design a plan for the next three years that will force concession after concession from him.

He has decided on a bold and very risky strategy of refusing to negotiate as long as the House attempts to use its power of the purse to force concessions.

The Democrats have adopted harsh language to describe House Republicans as terrorists wearing body bombs, hostage takers, and even traitors. The mainstream media has enthusiastically picked up all insults and repeated them endlessly. The intensity of this vilification indicates the Democrats’ strategic desire to break the House Republicans.

Historically there have been 17 government shutdowns since 1976. All were settled. All were part of the American system of constitutional government when the legislative and executive branches are in conflict. This is the eighteenth shutdown but the level of hostility and vicious language is far greater than any earlier shutdown.

Similarly, debt ceilings have been negotiated with various amendments beginning in 1953 under President Eisenhower. For 60 years, Presidents have accepted that the constitutional give-and-take requires negotiating over debt ceilings.

President Obama is trying a very daring expansion of presidential power effectively taking away from the House its constitutional prerogatives and demanding it give him what he wants on his terms with no amendments and no conditions.

This is not a personality defect. This is a cold, calculated strategy. If the House Republicans hang on and actually get concessions they will have set the stage for three more years of forced concessions.

If President Obama hangs on and coerces a clean continuing resolution and a clean debt ceiling hike he will have set the stage for three years of presidential dominance.

It was an indication of the President's determination that after his Secretary of the Treasury warned that the financial world would collapse next week if we didn’t raise the debt ceiling, he rejected a six week clean increase of the debt ceiling because it did not meet his requirements.

It will be interesting to see if he accepts concessions on anything or holds out on everything through the weekend.