A GOP surrender ends debt ceiling crisis

What happened

Congressional lawmakers negotiated a last-minute plan to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling this week, as the U.S. averted a historic default on its debts. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed on a bill that would fund the government until Jan. 15, 2014, and extend the debt ceiling through Feb. 7. It also created a bicameral negotiating committee tasked with developing a longer-term budget by Dec. 13, to avoid a rerun of this month’s crisis. The bill included a minor safeguard to ensure Obamacare recipients were being honest about their income, but did not fulfill the original Republican goals of defunding or delaying the health-care law. The House was due to vote on the bill as The Week went to press. McConnell said Republicans remained committed to repealing Obamacare, but conceded defeat for now. “This is far less than many of us hoped for, frankly,” he said.

House Speaker John Boehner said Republicans would shift tactics in their opposition to Obamacare, relying “on aggressive oversight that highlights the law’s massive flaws.” But the focus will now move to forging a Grand Bargain between the two parties that preserves the level of the spending cuts in the sequester through reforms to Social Security and Medicare. Corporate tax reform will also be on the table. Sen. Lindsey Graham said Republicans had squandered some of their leverage on spending and taxes in a doomed fight to uproot Obamacare. “This has been a really bad two weeks for the Republican Party,” Graham said.

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What the editorials said

At last, a “glimmer of sanity,” said The Washington Post. After the madness of the past few weeks, the deal forged by Reid and McConnell opens the door to “modest progress” on the country’s long-term spending issues. If Democrats and Republicans can agree to entitlement reforms that save enough money to restore needed spending on defense, education, and infrastructure, “two birds will have been felled with one stone.” The deal even has the potential to break the GOP’s blackmail fever, said The New York Times. The February debt ceiling increase will come just as many Republicans face midterm primaries, putting “greater pressure on them to act responsibly.”

What a debacle for Republicans, said The Wall Street Journal. GOP conservatives “picked a goal they couldn’t achieve in defunding Obamacare from one house of Congress,” using “means they couldn’t sustain politically.” President Obama called their bluff. Republicans can repair some of the damage by using the coming negotiations to reaffirm their strong, popular positions on lower spending and tax reform.

What the columnists said

The Republicans’ total defeat is not just good for the Democrats, said Jonathan Chait in NYMag.com. It’s a victory for Constitutional governance and the country, which cannot withstand “endless crises and panics.” Republicans have precisely nothing to show for nearly driving the country’s economy into ruin and, in fact, now must contend with the disgust of big business and the rage of their base. Now that they see that playing chicken with Obama won’t work, perhaps Republicans “will stop playing.”

Republicans would have won if they had stood firm, said Erick Erickson in RedState.com. Instead, they threw in the towel, letting Obamacare go into effect and handing the president a major victory. True conservatives must now fund primary challengers to oust these cowards. “If they refuse to fight for us, we must fight them.”

Sane Americans can sigh with relief for now, said David Frum in TheDailyBeast.com, but the bitter policy confrontations will continue. The two parties are locked into “a new and more ruthless style of politics” because America has entered an “era of scarcity.” In good economic times, it was possible to achieve a sustainable balance of high spending and relatively low tax rates. The stagnant economy is forcing agonizing choices affecting millions of people. At the same time, many Americans are deeply uneasy about the national debt, and rapid social and demographic change. All together, these factors make every political dispute seem “acute, imminent, and zero sum.” Brace yourself: There are “more crises ahead.”