Mitch McConnell's Sensible Debt Limit Recommendation

I read yesterday's lead staff editorial in the Wall Street Journal describing GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell's idea for Congress to allow Wonderboy to unilaterally increase the debt limit in three steps through 2012.

According to the editorial, many conservatives think McConnell is bailing out on the GOP and Tea Partiers. But I found myself agreeing with the piece's position, i.e., the Republicans, controlling only the House, and not the Senate nor White House, were not ever guaranteed of being able to force the president to compromise on the debt limit issue.

Nobody will want to be responsible for a default, so even the GOP House will eventually have to vote for the increase. McConnell sensibly sees that Wonderboy has played the 'Grandma's going to lose her Social Security because the Republicans won't make the rich pay their fair share of taxes.' Whatever fair share means in that context.

But it's a good idea to simply cut to the chase, end the faux-negotiations, and offer the Democrats an option for Wonderboy to increase the limit on his own, with no GOP votes in support.

It's impossible for a party holding only one house of Congress to make the president of the other party knuckle under on something like this. And as the Journal's editorial noted, the longer the GOP waits to relent, the worse it will look, and perhaps even be.

The piece quoted former Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm as having said, to paraphrase,

'Don't take any hostages you aren't prepared to shoot.'

Clearly, the GOP isn't truly prepared to have the US default on its debt interest payments.

But as soon as Wonderboy went to the fear card, rather than working with Geithner to figure out how to meet the most important obligations without a debt limit increase, the GOP gambit was basically over. It's not going to shoot that hostage.

It's enough, for now, that most intelligent observers have seen that the president was never serious about cutting spending. He only wants to tax and spend some more.

Point taken.

Now the Republicans can offer a means by which the First Rookie can cement his big spending image on his own, or with House and Senate Democrats, and let the GOP continue their refinement of their spending reduction and tax reform messages for 2012.

Much Ado About Earmarks

Thank God Mitch McConnell finally got some sense slapped into him by more conservative, sensitive GOP Senators like Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint. Senators who actually bothered to notice the Tea Party activists and their fury over federal spending.

Leave to old mossbacks like McConnell to turn a deaf ear to the very movement that gave him 6 additional Senators to work with.

Sure, now he's repenting and beating his breast in support of a Republican Senate ban on earmarks. But what about his obstinacy to the idea for the past few weeks? Even John Boehner managed to man up and bow to his younger, more in-tune colleagues, like Eric Cantor.

Frankly, I just don't trust McConnell. I'd much rather see Coburn, Corker or DeMint heading up the GOP Senate caucus.

What the Congressional House and Senate leadership seem to miss is that it's not the party loyalists, but the independents whom they have to convince, for the next two years, that they have really, finally gotten it.

Because a failure to do so could swing control in Congress right back the other way again. And with Wonderboy at the top of the ticket next time, and maybe a better economic scenario, don't think it can't happen.

Come Next January......

While having lunch the other day with another conservative and long-time friend and work colleague, we found ourselves discussing the possibility of the Republicans retaking both the House and the Senate.

One thing was immediately obvious to both of us which, sadly, probably won't happen. We felt that neither John Boehner, currently House Minority Leader, nor Mitch McConnell, currently Senate Minority Leader, should be allowed to assume the position of leader of his chamber, should the GOP take either one back. In Boehner's case, that would mean denying him the post of Speaker of the House.

It seemed relatively simple to my friend and me. Anybody in leadership when the party lost the majority in a chamber can't be allowed to resume leadership if/when they get it back.

Only the 'inside baseball' players in the party's Congressional caucuses would miss the reason for this. That is, if someone is associated with the party's loss of a chamber, it is folly to let him or her resume leadership in what is supposed to be a new period of the party's empowerment.

Most voters are neither hard-core Democrats, nor Republicans. I believe the plurality of voters aren't even registered with either party. Thus, the face of leadership of either party in the House or Senate majority is primarily to those who aren't of the party.

That's why recycling the perennially artificially-tanned Boehner or the inept McConnell would be a big mistake. Why not announce, a priori, that they become the majority party, the Republicans will choose new leaders. They don't even have to suggest any nominees, although Eric Cantor and Tom Coburn are obvious candidates.

Call it the Moses Clause. He never crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land.

Congressional delegations would be wise to adopt this principle in their own affairs when power changes between the parties in the House or Senate.

Mitch McConnell's Failure of Leadership

It's doubtful that the GOP will retake the Senate this November. However, if they do, I hope that the newly-elected Republicans will help give the inept Mitch McConnell a shove out of the leadership.

As the Wall Street Journal's editorial page noted this week, McConnell displayed a signal incompetence in allowing the disastrous FINREG bill to not only gain cloture, but actually pass. All in the name of 'we have to do SOMETHING.'

This isn't going to improve things in the financial sector. And it's not even clear it can win elections.

Why didn't McConnell take to the airwaves and make the rounds of the cable news networks with a clear, concise, factually pitch to explain the GOP's issues with Dodd's terrible bill, and their better ideas?

This tactic of capitulating to the Democrats and their poster boy for corruption, Chris Dodd, is just not cutting it.

McConnell is showing his true colors as a card-carrying member of the Old Guard. He needs to go, too, when the Republicans retake the Senate.

God help us if both the perennially-tanned John Boehner becomes Speaker, and McConnell Senate Majority Leader. All those independents, like me, who are fed up with Wonderboy & Co., will question whether the GOP Congressional delegations have really gotten the point of what will hopefully be fundamentally-realigning elections this fall.

McConnell's Brilliant Maneuvering on the Senate Auto Maker Bailout Bill

A little over a week ago, I wrote this post regarding the politics of the then-evolving Congressional bailout of the US-owned auto industry.

In it, I predicted,

"Look for Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan to brace House Minority Leader John Boehner, forcing him to withhold support for any Democratic bailout of the Detroit auto makers which does not first require their filing Chapter 11. Look for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to do the same, while President Bush cites Republican Congressional preference for a bill that includes that requirement.

Bush, Boehner and McConnell, standing in front of the White House, will make an effective team as the President gives his full support to the Republican leaders' version of a bill to help auto workers, via a DIP loan to those auto makers which file for bankruptcy, while steadfastly refusing to engage in corporate welfare and government picking winners and losers in the free market."

I wasn't exactly on target. Bush, sadly, has begun to listen to the wrong people, fail to shame Wagoner for waiting too long to file for bankruptcy, and worry too much about his economic legacy.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, however, performed brilliantly. As this weekend's Wall Street Journal noted,

"In the Senate's Thursday night automobile showdown, the United Auto Workers said "No thanks" to a bailout with strings attached. Most Senate Republicans took them at their word and voted to block the bill. But within hours, President Bush blinked and Treasury is now scrambling to use money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Who'd have thought Mr. Bush would want to join the long line of Detroit executives in caving to the UAW?

Senate Republicans had more gumption. Led by Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, they asked the auto workers to show they were serious about making Detroit competitive again. In exchange for a lifeline from Washington, Mr. Corker wanted the union to set a "date certain" in 2009 for lowering the Detroit Three's hourly labor costs to the average of foreign-owned auto makers in the U.S. He also wanted creditors to bring down Detroit's total debt by two-thirds through an equity swap, making sure debtholders share the cost of restructuring.

The union's counteroffer was that it would bring down labor costs in 2011, when its current contracts run out. Maybe we missed something, but we thought GM and Chrysler were facing bankruptcy now, not in three years. As Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor, that sounds like "taxpayer money today for reforms that may or may not come tomorrow."

Thursday's showdown marked an important political moment for the Republican Party. By refusing to write a blank check to Detroit, Senate Republicans have started to reclaim some credibility on fiscal policy and the role of government in the economy. They did so standing up to a Republican President who doesn't want any more bad headlines, as well as to Democrats who will blame the GOP if the auto makers collapse."

By tapping Corker to lead a spirited, well-intentioned effort to save American taxpayers from a hopeless attempt to 'rescue' already-failed companies, McConnell has positioned his party in the Senate to reclaim the mantle of fiscal rectitude, and regain serious numbers of seats, come 2010.

Americans, by a wide margin, have been polling in opposition to this bailout, because they understand that they are being asked to pay for the excessive pension benefits of union retirees, as well as the excessive current wages of union employees of GM, Ford and Chrysler.