A time for cooperation

Watching a presidential inauguration is always a deeply moving and meaningful experience.

President Barack Obama spoke eloquently about the economy, gender equity, voting rights, immigration, the safety of children, climate change and other issues that gnaw at our collective national gut. And he said, “We are made for this moment and we will seize it together.”

But can we seize it together?

The president’s first term began with the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), cynically saying the most important task for the Republican Party was to ensure that Pres. Obama was a one-term president. Forget about job creation, the national deficit and debt, foreign wars, poverty or any of the other troubling issues that can only be addressed by the nation’s political leaders working together.

McConnell was as good as his word. There was a record number of threatened filibusters in the last session of Congress, as Republicans used their “super minority” in the Senate to block a host of measures that would have required the Democrats to get a super majority of 60 votes to pass.

And in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, pretty much no progressive legislation ever made it in the front door, never mind onto the floor for debate and a vote.

The continuing fight over raising the nation’s debt limit probably shows this cynicism most clearly. Raising the debt limit is a technical procedure. Once Congress and the president agree on a spending plan and vote to pay for it – too often through extensive borrowing – they must then agree to raise the debt limit in order to actually borrow the funds.

In the past, Congressional Democrats, including then-Sen. Obama, have voted against raising the debt limit, but it was more of a protest vote then. But Congressional Republicans are using this technical procedure to threaten to shut down the government if they don’t get another shot at cutting spending. Another chance to get their own way, even though Congress voted for the spending and borrowing that necessitated raising the debt limit in the first place.

World economy would be affected

Of course, a government shutdown would only be a modest result of failing to raise the debt limit. The most impact would be felt in the economy, as a government default would set off a catastrophic chain reaction, as the country’s creditors, both domestic and foreign, would be left holding the bag for billions of dollars in U.S. debt. 

And the Congressional Republicans say with a straight face it’s perfectly legitimate to use this technical debt vote as a bargaining chip with the Democrats, putting the entire world economy on the line in a high-stakes game of poker.

This term, Pres. Obama plans to take his ideas directly to the people, with increased public appearances and speaking events, in the hope constituent pressure on Congress will convince the GOP it’s time to put aside this hypocritical obstructionism and not engage in a head-to-head confrontation over the debt limit. Hopefully, other efforts at cooperation will follow.

The country was optimistic at the time of the president’s first inauguration and is still looking for this kind cooperation, but it’s up to the Republicans to bargain in good faith. 

As San Francisco State University political scientist Robert Smith said in an interview with NPR this week, “I was certainly more optimistic four years ago than I am now. I had not realized at that time the extent to which the ideological and partisan polarization would actually lead the Republican Party to oppose virtually everything the president would propose.”

This is the moment to cooperate. And we must seize it together.

Posted by Bruce Garlow on January 24, 2013. Filed under Berkshire Beacon Hill Spotlight,Columns,Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry