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After Big Punt, Here’s How GOP Can Score

By: Ned Ryun (Diary)  |  January 24th, 2013 at 01:23 PM  | 

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As a conservative, I hate when Republicans constantly punt on spending. It’s annoying, and it keeps happening. We have no reason to think it won’t keep happening.

American Majority Action opposed the House GOP leadership’s plan to suspend the debt ceiling for four months without spending cuts. We believe that the day to stop stealing from our children is today–not tomorrow, not four months from now.

However, the House passed it anyway, with 33 conservatives dissenting. Now that it’s passed, and the Senate will likely pass it, the real question becomes: Now what?

It’s important to note that outgoing Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan voted for this debt ceiling suspension. Jordan, by all intents and purposes, is the primary leader of conservatives in the House. So, why did he vote for more debt?

Because conservatives, if we keep persevering, are going to receive something HUGE in return from House GOP leadership. I suspect Jordan may have negotiated with Boehner. Jordan is no slouch, and would never, ever compromise his principles without a major victory in return.

Here’s what I believe Jordan and conservatives should expect from leadership, some of which is already public:

  • The House will pass budget which balances in ten years. (Public)
  • The House will use the Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government to get real, undelayed spending cuts (more than just the sequester).
  • The House will allow the sequester to take effect, maybe with a small amendment for defense spending.
  • The House will use the May debt ceiling to force the Senate to pass a budget which balances in the next 10 years.

Speaker Boehner wants to put the pressure on Senate Democrats, which is wise. Under the just-passed deal, the Senate will be forced to pass a budget by April 15. With 12 Democrats running in races polled within 10 points–two in red-leaning states, six in dark red states–the Senate may pass a bill to the right of what President Obama wants. Senators Landrieu, Hagan, Pryor, Johnson, Begich, Shaheen, and Baucus will have a tough time selling higher spending and taxes in their states. Really tough.

But, after we get the Senate to pass a budget, it’s time to make them pass a budget we want.

During the next debt ceiling fight, it’ll be time for House Republicans to grow some courage and not be afraid to hit the debt ceiling.

Remember, what exactly happens when we hit the debt ceiling? In reality, it’s a balanced budget, stupid. When we can’t take out any new net debt, the government is forced into spending only what it takes in.

The rumors that we’d all be dead on December 21, 2012 were more valid than President Obama’s claim that the United States will default on its bonds upon hitting the debt ceiling. In the next year, the US government will take in around $2.6 trillion in revenue, according to the CBO. Servicing the debt–which prevents any defaults–costs between $220 to $250 billion dollars a year: A mere 8.5 percent of total revenues.

In fact, if we were to hit the debt ceiling and stop taking out debt altogether, we could still afford all of our “mandatory spending,” including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, defense, and interest payments (servicing the debt). The CBO projects these mandatory programs will cost $2.3 trillion in 2013; they project our revenue will be $2.6 trillion–leaving nearly $300 billion left for discretionary spending.

Point being, Republicans punted on the debt ceiling this time, but, to continue the football metaphor, punts don’t always result in the other side scoring. We’re going to get the ball back, but when we do, Republicans can’t fall on their backsides like we have been. Republicans need to be ready to score.

And, by score, I mean being ready to stop stealing from our children’s future and balance the budget.

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  • davesinsanantonio

    That is one of the problems with some of the people who comment here, and by extension the electorate–they are so tied up in the supposed “purity” of their thinking that they refuse to understand reality. We are still living in a world where reality exists–regardless of the fantasies of either the Right or the Left. The fantasies differ, of course, but they can cause some voters to act against their own best interests. As sitting home last election proved. Or, as pushing for a third party will prove if such a move ever really gets under way. Or, as thinking that letting Obummer destroy the country at will will somehow magically make all the “low information voters” intelligent enough to accept our arguments and become informed conservatives.

    So, yes, you are correct in that “we have to work with what we have”, but some people will continue to rant and rave that we have to follow their fantasies instead.

  • davesinsanantonio

    We can trust the Left to always be on the left. But, the House has just as much to say about where the money is spent as the White House and its lickspittle press. So, we must pressure the House to write the budget and other spending bills to fund the things that are necessary politically. Take away the Left’s “large propaganda ammunition magazines” and they will just be sputtering in the wind. I admit that we have an uphill battle with the media, but a wise offensive is better than a desperate defense every time. So, we have to start that offensive early and not just react to the press’s lies. The problem with the current Republican leadership is that some of them lean left, and some of them are weasels, and some of them are spineless cowards, and some of them are multiples of these. So, the conservatives have to make their own noises and ignore the leadership’s attempts to shush them up.

  • albertmaslar

    You can’t teach an old dog new tricks as Boehner and company are the real enemy. Everyone knows who the liberals are but a wolf in sheep’s clothing is perhaps more dangerous as the enemy within is the worst.

  • mhorner

    I keep hoping against hope that Boehner will deliver a WWF quality “Smackdown” to that egomaniac who calls himself President, but Obama just lifts his chin up and takes another lavish vacation after vanquishing the GOP again. What we need is a true Conservative and leader as Speaker. Michele Backmann has proven to be a very strong Conservative and she is definitely a leader, but I’m sure there are other principled and “tough as nails Conservatives such as Trey Gowdy.” The House should hold a “closed” vote for a new Speaker so that Boehner cannot punish whoever does not vote for him.

  • libertynugget

    I don’t think its a matter of purity of conservatism. We’re running $1,000,000,000,000+ annual deficits. 2010 the GOP landslide was supposed to bring some fiscal sanity to our country. They’ve done NOTHING but flinch and cave since. I remember the grand compromise of the first debt ceiling debate landed us a whopping $200,000,000 cut. Really? That’s the best we could do with control of the House???

    The sequestration BOTH parties voted for at least there was going to be some form of spending cuts, but now everyone is running away from it.

    My larger point is that GOP leadership is inept. Cutting spending isn’t going to be popular nor is it going to make for great ‘sound bytes’ in the media, but it HAS to be done. Real leadership means doing what is right and standing strong to your principals.

  • Ari

    It continues.
    Lack of grass roots political reality.
    I understand frustration.
    Things are radically out of reason, irrational.
    But Please! Don’t let frustration lead you to NAÏVE and unworkable protests that are self destructive.
    All the “Obama types” need to fully take over the world…
    Premature “Third Party” is a cop-out that is also a self-destruct.
    We haven’t even been successful within the Republican. There is a reason.
    We fail at communication as well as standing stead fast with all our will and might. Conservativism and Morality are powerful and down to earth reality.
    First we must capture the minds of those most likely to listen withing the Republican party. Then work to make it stronger, reasonable, and attractive on a simple practical level.
    Third Party is no solution, rather it is disolution of any defense against the very evils that cause our frustration.

    Bad as even a RINO is, he agrees more with us than do most voting Democrats.

  • mogul264

    For MUCH too long, the GOP leadership has been fidgeting and quailing on what the Democrats wanted to do, or didn’t or haven’t done, and failing to boldly proceed on their own. program!

    Every time the Dems cone with some lame-brained idea, the GOP harrumps, and grumbles, and lets it pass, anyway. Now the President has put forth the warmed-over idea of gun-control, despite countless gun-control laws ALREADY existing, and which have proven inadequate to ACTUALLY control guns. And, the reason is simple……..laws are followed by the lawful. Law-breakers, as the name implies, DO NOT!

    Those craven cowards who perform these heinous acts against schoolchildren are seriously insane, Perhaps not ‘clinically’ insane, or insane enough to be confined, but, essentially, INSANE.! I classify asocial, anti-social, or religious-duped, and similar types in this category. Notice, I did NOT say STUPID! These certainly aren’t so stupid they would go into a controlled access government building, or police station and open fire as they have done in the schools! They wouldn’t get more than a few until they are stopped!

    Actually, I had forgotten Maj. NIdal Hassan WAS on a controlled-access military base (Ft. Hood, TX), but here, as on most of the U.S. bases, the great majority of the soldiers were NOT routinely armed, as they are in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. Again, that was then. I don’t know the present security arrangements, but I’m sure tensions are heightened. Hassan is what I would classify as insane by virtue of religious-duping, even if not necessarily a coward!

    Rather than the President and/.or Congress monkeying with ever more ineffectual gun-’control’; laws, trying to confiscate arms and attempting to contravene the 2nd Amendment, they should be working to rectify why some are in such a mental state as to WANT to massacre children. Stop the ACLU from forcing institutions to release patients who have decided, on their own, they are now “cured’”, and ensure other patients are taking their prescribed medicines, even if the medicine effects make them ‘feel funny’ or ‘feel dull’! ,Help stop THESE, and we will be MUCH better off!