OVER THE LAST month, many US states have continued to tally absentee and provisional ballots to determine the final vote count for all candidates in last month’s general election.
OVER THE LAST month, many US states have continued to tally absentee and provisional ballots to determine the final vote count for all candidates in last month’s general election. These final vote numbers have actually swung several close Congressional elec- tions into the Democratic column and increased President Obama’s margin of victory in the national popular vote to almost five million votes. But the really delicious irony in the final vote tally is that Mitt ‘Mr 47 Per Cent’ Romney looks like he will finish with – you guessed it – 47 per cent of the popular vote.
Given Romney’s perspective that his job as President would have been to only worry about those Americans who voted for him, it wasn’t a surprise to me that in his first post-election con- ference call with his biggest donors and fundraisers, he blamed his loss on the “gifts” President Obama gave to young people, Hispanics and African Americans – gifts, he complained, that led to a larger than expected turnout among the so-called ‘47 per cent’.
Conservative media demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly were predictably quick to support this notion, But I was also pleasantly surprised to see a number of prominent Republicans who had strongly supported Romney, such as Louisiana Governor Booby Jindal and Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker, repudiate Romney’s ‘gifts’ remarks, saying that they were “absolutely wrong”. This is a hopeful sign for those who want to see Republicans play a more constructive role in addressing America’s fiscal problems.
Another encouraging sign is in remarks by a number of Congressional Republicans that indicate a new willingness to ignore Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge and agree to some tax increases. Based on this, and the fact that both President Obama and Republicans initially spoke in conciliatory tones about the cur- rent “fiscal cliff’ tax and spending debate, I was confident that Congressional Republicans will finally do what they were elected to do: put the interests of their country ahead of their parties’ politi- cal interests.
Unfortunately, it seems I may have been a bit too optimistic about the idea of statesmanship trumping partisan politics. In his first term, President Obama tried to compromise with Republicans by crafting legislative proposals specifically designed to address Republican concerns about taxes and spending. But Congressional Republicans pocketed these concessions and instead of moving towards political compromise, demanded that the president accept even deeper spending cuts. They knew this would damage the country’s economic recovery, yet refused to compromise in order to curry favour with ‘Tea Party’ conservatives.
One of the most egregious tactics Republicans used to black- mail President Obama into extending the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans was their refusal to approve an increase in America’s debt limit. Republican brinkmanship on this issue not only slowed America’s economic recovery by sapping business confidence, it also led to the first downgrade of our AAA credit rat- ing in American history. In the wake of their electoral losses in November, some Republicans are now suggesting that they should agree to let taxes go up, but once again use the need to increase the debt limit to force President Obama to accept new spending cuts.
President Obama is determined to avoid a repeat of the 2011 debt ceiling battle so he has taken the unusual step of appealing to business groups like the influential Business Roundtable to sup- port his proposal to put an end to Republican threats to allow America to default on its debt. What is even more interesting is the fact that the same business leaders who helped fund Mitt Romney’s presidential election bid appear to be in agreement with Obama about the need to make it harder for the Republican Party to block increases in America’s debt limit.
In the future, President Obama wants to be able to request an increase in the debt limit, which the Republicans in Congress can then vote against. President Obama would then veto the Congressional disapproval, which would require a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate to override his veto. But making it hard- er for Republicans to use the threat of defaulting on America’s debt also represents a significant transfer of power from Congress to the president. So even though most Americans and the news media are focusing on the ‘fiscal cliff’ tax and spending battle, I am watching what happens in the debt ceiling battle. Stay tuned.
Charles Laffiteau is a US Republican from Dallas, Texas who is pursu- ing a PhD in Public Policy and Political Economy. He previously lec- tured on Contemporary US Business & Society at DCU from 2009- 2011.
