Don’t Jump! Avoiding the Fiscal Cliff
The first task that awaits President Obama as he wraps up the quadrennial “year off” that we give to campaigning Presidents is to reduce the deficit and to confront the impending fiscal cliff, defined as the scheduled end of the Bush tax cuts coupled with a series of massive cuts to discretionary and defense spending known as “sequestration.” Sequestration was put in place during the last comparable scenario, the debt ceiling debacle, with never-before-seen levels of partisan gridlock. With neither party willing to fully give in to the other’s demands, negotiations ended in close to the worst possible situation. Congress agreed on the smallest possible deal that would enable them to avoid the issue, and delayed making a final decision until after the election, getting the United States’ sterling credit rating downgraded in the process.
Now there is just a matter of weeks until the fiscal cliff deadline. On January 1st 2013, a series of massive spending cuts and tax increases will go into effect; the only thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on is that they don’t want this to happen. Although another partisan showdown looms, there is hope this time around for real negotiation. The rhetoric this time is a marked departure from the debt ceiling showdown in 2011, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that “[t]he single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” The leadership has struck a more conciliatory tone, with House Speaker John Boehner conceding that, “because the American people expect us to find common ground, we are willing to accept some additional revenues via tax reform;” and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stating his willingness to “dance” rather than fight. Congress may well agree on a solution, but in all likelihood, it will be right before the deadline and include bitter partisan battles.
In a recent talk at Washington University, former Missouri Congressman, House Majority Leader, and presidential candidate Dick Gephardt spoke about the deficit deal that he and his peers enacted in the early 90s. In stressing the difficulties of being a Congressman, Gephardt said that he and other leaders hammered out a deal and tried for six months to get the requisite number of votes. They failed. He said they then invited about 120 key congressmen, as well as the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office, to a 10-day retreat at Andrews Air Force Base. After the retreat, the deficit reduction team still did not have enough votes. Two years later, in 1993, Congressman Gephardt’s camp thought they had just barely enough “yesses” and sent the deal to a vote. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky was the deciding vote, and although she had previously opposed the budget, she accepted Gephardt and President Clinton’s personal appeals and voted yes, knowing she had probably cost herself her next election. Gephardt referred to Margolies-Mezvinsky as a true American hero, someone who put country before personal success and essentially gave up her seat in the House to secure a prosperous future for her country.
We need Congress to be more like Margolies-Mezvinsky. Any combination of tax increases and spending cuts will be painful in the short term. The challenge is to pass the budget bill that will best suit our communal interests in the long term instead of appeasing interest groups and voting blocs in the short term. The deficit reduction bill that gets passed will not be popular. Those debating whether to vote for it should look beyond their next election to the long-term good of the American people. Those who pass it will not be hailed as heroes. In fact, they will probably be demonized by negative ads the next time they run for office. But to truly act in the spirit of bipartisanship that the two Presidential candidates exhorted, this bill must be hammered out and passed.