“Over the next few months, I’ll continue to make a detailed case to these lawmakers about why I believe a balanced approach is necessary to finish the job,” the president said Sunday.
Obama’s big compromise on the debt-ceiling deal was agreeing to a “trigger” forcing across-the-board spending cuts — including to Medicare and defense — should the committee process not work.
Highlights of the deal.
President Barack Obama says a deal has been reached to raise the government's debt ceiling and avoid a default. He said the deal includes more than $2 trillion in gradual spending cuts and no initial cuts to Social Security and Medicare. (July 31)
Many Democrats will be relieved to learn that the automatic cuts would not apply to Medicaid, Social Security and certain programs for low-income families. But liberals had hoped the trigger would include taxes. Instead, by late Sunday, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) declared a total victory on that front — telling his colleagues, “The White House bid to raise taxes has been shut down.”
A White House official argued Sunday that the president had another trump card to play: the scheduled expiration of the George W. Bush tax cuts at the end of 2012.
Obama would block extension of the reductions, either as a final act in office after losing the November 2012 election or after winning a second term. At a minimum, the issue gives him leverage for this year’s deficit battle.
The trouble for Obama is that presidents generally do not want to turn their reelection campaigns into crusades for higher taxes. Polling data may show voters siding with Obama on the details, but in general Democrats lose when Republicans paint them as tax-and-spend liberals — which explains why the White House was so eager to avoid another debt-ceiling vote.
Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said the ongoing debate over taxes and spending would take Democrats, and the president, away from addressing voters’ larger concerns about how to create jobs and stimulate the economy.
“Everyday Democrats aren’t talking jobs is a less-than-optimal day for us,” Mellman said.
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and the creator of the no-new-taxes pledge signed by most Republicans, was ebullient Sunday at the substance and political implications for the deal.
Obama may declare victory, he said, but after relenting on taxes, “he’s playing hurt.” Norquist said Republicans next year can make a case that the 2011 deal would have been far bigger had the GOP controlled the Senate and the White House. And they will argue that when it came to spending cuts, “Obama fought us every step of the way.”
Norquist added that he was “pleasantly shocked” that Obama had not sought a debt-ceiling increase last year, when the president struck another deal with the GOP extending the Bush tax cuts — given that the president had far more leverage at that point.
Some Democrats, too, turned Sunday to questioning Obama’s negotiating skills — asking if he could have avoided the current crisis altogether and maintained a stronger political position.
Obama, after all, could have accepted earlier GOP plans that included additional tax revenue — including one that he was negotiating with Boehner. The speaker, who seemed willing to allow $800 billion in additional revenue, walked out of the talks when Obama asked for more.
Now, according to Democratic critics, the poor and the middle class are at greater risk from cuts.
One senior Senate Democratic aide said that averting a default was a victory of sorts for Obama, “but when you look at the emerging details, spending cuts and triggers with no revenue, the president got rolled.”
Asked if the deal was balanced, as the president had required, former Obama White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein said, “Not by any stretch of the imagination.”
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