Debt-ceiling fight offers Obama opportunity

As President Obama addresses the nation this week in a speech on deficit
reduction, just what are Americans to think? For starters, he created
his own debt commission, and when its members released their
recommendations in December, he chose to do nothing with them. In his
State of the Union address in January, Obama chose to emphasize
“investments” in education and infrastructure rather than pressing for
meaningful deficit reduction. His budget, released in February,
confirmed that tackling our fiscal crisis was a job either for another
day or for Republicans.
 
But with the battle over the remainder of fiscal 2011 out of the way, and a government shutdown averted, now both parties will turn to a vote on an increase in the debt ceiling. Republicans are threatening, some promising, to vote against any increase without dramatic spending cuts and likely statutory spending caps.The president’s party usually must provide the unseemly votes to raise the debt ceiling, which is why in 2006 Republicans held their noses and voted to help out President Bush while then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) voted against an increase. In addition, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) released his bold and controversial budget plan last week, which would overhaul Medicare and make Medicaid a block-grant program. With that marker laid down, Obama’s speech is an acknowledgment of reality — Republicans have literally dragged the president to the table on entitlement reform.
 
The Ryan budget won’t pass the Congress and be signed into law. But the debt-ceiling vote is a must-pass for a president trying to protect a fragile economic recovery, and the concept of the United States defaulting on its loan obligations is unthinkable. It is likely that no matter what occurs in the dramatic, political, overheated standoff that is surely coming, President Obama will take credit for the final result. And as mediator-in-chief, a role he relishes and plays well, he will remain calm and urge cooperation rather than throw bombs. The left will be disappointed, as liberal Democrats were after the tax-cut extension deal of December and the “largest budget cut in history” that is expected to pass this week.
 
The dynamics of the newly divided government, with an emboldened GOP facing off against a Democrat trying desperately to run to the center, is often compared to the situation in which congressional Republicans found themselves in 1996, when they fought President Clinton and then became his handy foil. In a telling piece today in The Washington Post, Greg Sargent reminds us that while Clinton worked for a balanced budget and welfare reform, which brought him to the center, he also stood his ground by drawing a hard line against Medicare cuts, and warned against a “winner-take-all society.” That contrast with Republicans was one that Michael Waldman, Clinton’s speech writer at the time, said helped Clinton win reelection. Waldman said Clinton “drew a clear line in the sand on the things that he wasn’t going to compromise on … he fought a real public battle on those things. He drew a sharp line on core principles and fought for them very hard.”
 
The moment for Obama to do the same, notes Waldman, has arrived. “This is an opportunity for him to spell out with clarity his vision of the role of government,” Waldman said. “If he doesn’t, it will be an opportunity lost.”
 
Well said.
 

WILL REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS COME TOGETHER ON ENTITLEMENT REFORM? DO THEY WANT TO? Ask A.B. returns Tuesday, April 26. Please join my weekly video Q&A by sending your questions and comments to askab@digital-staging.thehill.com. Thank you.