We are only 46 days into the new year, but as far as official Washington is concerned, it’s already November – at least in focus. The tangible signs are unmistakable.
On Tuesday, unable to craft legislation that could garner the majority support of his Caucus, Speaker John Boehner effective ceded control of the House floor to the Democrats to enable the Chamber to pass a bill to raise the debt ceiling without any conditions. The remarkable 221-201 vote margin, made possible by 193 Democrats and 28 lonely Republicans, raises and caps the debt ceiling at $17.2 trillion – enough borrowing authority to keep the federal government functioning until March 2015 – after the midterm elections.
Boehner’s path to the debt ceiling vote spoke volumes about the ill-conceived and disastrous approach the GOP undertook last October, which resulted in a 13-day government shutdown, cratering Republican approval ratings, and in the end, not a single Democratic concession. The President won, the GOP was humiliated, and only the rollout of Obamacare saved the Republican political brand from semi-permanent ruination.
This time, with the midterms at stake, Boehner and the GOP leadership were taking no chances. There would be no political folly substituting as serious strategy this time around, no matter the grumbling of Tea Party conservatives in the House.
The same holds true for immigration, but in reverse. While Boehner and the House leadership sought a path forward to put this vexing issue behind the GOP and improve outreach to Latino voters, Tea Party conservatives effectively scuttled the Speaker’s grand plans, forcing Boehner to all but abandon immigration reform before the 2014 elections. For the Republicans, it will be Obamacare, all the time, between now and November, an attempt to create enough intensity to take the six Senate seats necessary to retire Harry Reid from the Majority Leader’s position, and hold the House.
Brave Democratic strategists and politicians may beg to differ with the Republican analysis, but White House actions speak loud than the bravado.
Quietly, and on a Friday (to minimize media coverage), the Treasury Department put out new regulations again delaying the employer mandate under Obamacare. Under this latest order, employers with 50 to 99 workers will have another year before they are required to provide insurance coverage for workers or pay a penalty. Companies that employ 100 or more workers have until 2015 to ensure that a percentage of fulltime staffers are covered, starting with 70 percent before requiring full coverage three years from now.
The change, which is constitutionally suspect, effectively prevents a repeat of the mass cancellations – like those that took place in the individual health insurance marketplace – from happening to small business owners this year, whose health insurance coverage does not meet Obamacare minimums. The ensuring anger and chaos would only throw more fuel on the fire on the Obamacare debate, inconveniently, right before the election.
Look for the Administration to do all that it can to postpone the impacts of Obamacare in the coming weeks and months to give Democrats in the Senate a fighting chance of holding on to power.
That is, of course, when it is not trying to change the story.
When you have nothing good to say about one policy, change the subject to something else. So the President and congressional Democrats have introduced “income inequality” as the defining issue of 2014, with proposed policy changes such as a raise in the minimum wage and other tinkering. It seems completely lost on Democrats – and their media enablers – that income inequality has actually gotten worse during the Obama years, but Team Obama never let an inconvenient fact get in the way of a great story line.
Don’t expect much to come of the agenda, whose true purpose is simply to provide competing static to interrupt the GOP hammer blows on Obamacare, and keep MSNBC in righteous talking points. But this is will be the focus of the next 260 days in Washington.
What we won’t have:
A grand bargain on entitlements and taxes.
A deal on the deficit and the debt.
A deal on federal spending priorities and our deteriorating defense posture.
Progress on immigration reform, domestic energy expansion or vitally necessary fixes for our crumbling infrastructure.
Americans decided not to decide in 2012, sending the same players to Washington in the same roles. For the lost months that the nation faces ahead, we can only hope that November 4th will be a decisive election, setting voter expectations for the last two years of the Obama presidency.