Eliot Spitzer on Obama?s debt ceiling dilemma: ?Time to turn the tables? on Boehner

?My View? from the Nov. 28, 2012, edition of ?Viewpoint with Eliot Spitzer.?

Eliot Spitzer:

Hidden among all this talk of the fiscal cliff-austerity bomb being covered in horrendous and tedious detail by every cable station, is a potentially more dangerous accounting deadline: the debt ceiling. And yes, this is deja vu all over again. But I have a solution for President Obama this time around. Mr. President ? turn the tables on him. Speaker Boehner that is.

We all recall the trap the White House fell into last year: letting negotiations over the potential government shutdown be concluded only to be held hostage again when Republicans then refused to raise the debt ceiling without getting additional concessions. It was, as Congressman Welch has said, professional malpractice not to wrap the debt ceiling into the first round of negotiations.

So don?t do it again. The debt ceiling will necessarily and inevitably be hit and breached early next year. Yet when President Obama told Speaker Boehner at their November 16th meeting to raise the ceiling by year?s end, Boehner said, and I quote, ?There is a price for everything.?

No ? there doesn?t have to be. Sometimes what is necessary and good policy should just be done. The ceiling will be breached because the fiscal track we are on created another huge deficit this year as every member of Congress knows and has implicitly supported by agreeing to the expenditures and revenues that are now in place. The debt ceiling will be exceeded because of Boehner?s policies. Policies that have driven revenues down to about 15.5 percent of GDP ? well below historical norms, and far below the expenditure levels of about 22 percent of GDP.

Never mind that Speaker Boehner called the debt ceiling, quote, ?his leverage.? And never mind that Speaker Boehner voted five times during the Bush presidency to raise the ceiling to the tune of nearly 4 trillion dollars. This time, unless he wants a default by the government he has a moral obligation to support raising the debt ceiling and now.

So here is the offer the president should make and how he should say it: ?Mr. Speaker ? last year I tolerated an unacceptable and improper effort by your House to extract concessions on an issue that should be a simple, procedural vote. I will not do that again. I have made many offers with respect to how we should bridge the chasm of the impending fiscal cliff. You have not responded with anything tangible. Unless you immediately raise the debt ceiling sufficiently to get us to January 1, 2015 based on current deficit projections, we are ceasing all negotiations. I am happy to have the Bush tax cuts expire on January 1, and then have you explain to the public that you have raised the taxes on all Americans and are playing games with our national debt obligations merely because you are unwilling to act responsibly.?

It is time to take the debt ceiling off the table as a negotiating ploy. Time to call their bluff, recognize that time is on our side, and turn up the heat on a Republican House leadership that has a weak hand.

Play hardball Mr. President. It feels good ? and you will win.

Source: http://current.com/shows/viewpoint/videos/eliot-spitzer-on-obamas-debt-ceiling-dilemma-time-to-turn-the-tables-on-boehner/

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