It Looks Like A Shutdown

According to House Speaker John Boehner, a meeting between congressional leaders at the White House this morning produced nothing in terms of a budget compromise that would avoid a government shutdown.

Boehner reportedly told President Obama that his the House Republicans will not be "forced to choose between two options that are bad for the country (accepting a bad deal that fails to make real spending cuts, or accepting a government shutdown due to Senate inaction)."

"That this is why House Republicans — in lieu of an agreement in which the White House and Senate agree to real spending cuts — are rallying behind a potential third option: a CR that funds our troops through September while cutting an additional $12 billion in spending and keeps the government running for another week."

This is a classic example of how the two parties think.

Boehner, Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor see a government that spent 8 times more money in March than it took in from revenue and are horrified at the practical implications. Obama and the Democrats are only concerned about the political implications of continuing the age-old Tammany Hall model of bribing interest groups for votes at the taxpayer's expense and how to spin the blame for a government shutdown on the Republicans.

For that matter, Boehner may have trouble getting the votes for that third option. The House, particularly the new, incoming freshmen with Tea Party backing know exactly why they were sent to Washington and are in a rebellious mood.

House Republican Leader Eric Cantor was particularly forthright about pinning the blame on President Barack Obama for any government shutdown because of the president's rejecting a Republican proposal that would have pushed the deadline back by one week.

"The White House now has increased the likelihood of a shutdown in just dismissing out of hand a vehicle that we have put forward to say, 'Look, we do not want a shutdown,'" Cantor told reporters.

He's fairly correct about that one.

What Obama is doing is attempting to lay the PR groundwork to blame the GOP when funds run out on Friday, and in this there's an odd symmetry between the President and the more conservative GOP congressmen. They both want to bring things to a head, although in the president's case he obviously expects the GOP establishment to cave in and reduce the spending cuts according to the president's wishes. Obama may be overplaying his hand.

The president, of course has another agenda entirely in mind.

Rep. Paul Ryan came out with his 2012 budget proposal today, which he describes in detail in today's WSJ. It calls for cutting a record $$6.2 trillion in spending from the National budget over the next 10 years and puts the nation on track to actually pay off our national debt.

It would also involve major cuts in Obama's projected budget, and the president obviously sees the current budget war as an opening battle on the far deeper cuts Ryan has planned.

This cuts to the heart of the Tammany Hall model that keeps the Democrats alive.

They need tax payer funds to bribe their constituencies and survive just like Dracula needs blood, and they will fight just as hard and be just as ruthless to keep the flow hemorrhaging..no matter what.

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