Published: November 3, 2010- The New York Times
In leading his party to midterm triumph, Representative John A. Boehner, the next speaker of the House, is not at the endgame. He is at the beginning of the next and harder fight.
Relying on his decades of experience with the inner workings of the House, Mr. Boehner, of Ohio, now has less than two years to show that the Republican Party is the antidote to what ails Washington, with a discordant caucus, a stagnant economy, a hostile White House with veto power and the long shadow of 1994 all looming before him.
His promises on behalf of the new House majority — reducing the size of government, creating jobs and fundamentally altering the way the Congress conducts its business — are mostly as lofty as they are unspecific, and his efforts to legislate them into reality must be done with ambitious upstarts within his own party and a fresh crop of Tea Partiers, some of whom seem to believe that it is they, not he, now running the show.
The demands on Mr. Boehner from voters are many and not all consistent.
There is a craving, polling shows, to see the current system upended, but preferably without gridlock or rancor. Voters want federal spending curtailed, but jealously guard costly entitlements. They angrily reject what is, but have no clearly articulated vision for what should be.
Indeed, Mr. Boehner and his party were delivered no clear mandate from voters, who, polls suggested, were rejecting a policy agenda more than they were rallying around one. One demand resonated loudly: the reduction of federal spending immediately, a daunting goal. Yet, among the first things that Mr. Boehner has said he will seek to accomplish are reversing cuts to the Medicare program and extending the expiring Bush-era tax cuts, steps that are hard to reconcile with a commitment to reining in the national debt.
Mr. Boehner, who will become second in line to the presidency in January, has responded to the contradictory forces that led to Republican victory with equally mixed messages.
He has given speeches about inclusiveness, then written Twitter messages denouncing compromise. He is specific about the amount of spending cuts he seeks — $100 billion — but says little about how he will get there. In speeches during a whirlwind tour of Ohio over the weekend, he promised things would be “different” in Washington, but then returned to the two-year theme of denigrating President Obama.
The best guiding documents for understanding what Mr. Boehner seeks to accomplish are the House Republican policy document titled “A Pledge to America” and his recent speech to the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. The former is a short collection of goals, some of them near-impossible in the near term (like ending government control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant mortgage companies) and a few small-bore but relatively easy to accomplish, like repealing paperwork rules imposed on small businesses.
Mr. Boehner and his party have also made it clear that they will immediately try to unravel the new health care law, either by repealing pieces of it, some of which have already gone into force, or by using the appropriations process to remove financing from its key provisions.
Mr. Boehner will also be tested — perhaps as early as during the lame duck session this month, when Democrats may be eager to put the issue to bed — on the tax cut front. Democrats would like to see tax cuts extended for all but the highest income levels, while Republicans seek to make them permanent for all taxpayers.
Dragging this battle out would create tremendous headaches for the Internal Revenue Service, and the issue might be settled in the lame duck session. But Mr. Boehner learned this year, when he indicated a willingness to work with Democrats to hammer out a middle ground solution and was excoriated by some party mates, that not all Republicans cotton to compromise on the issue.
Mr. Boehner, in his speech and in the pledge, also seeks to overhaul much of the way Congress does its business, including eliminating sprawling bills that are filled with items that have nothing to do with the legislation’s main intent, as well as requiring bills to cite constitutional authority and ensuring more bipartisan debate on bills.
There is no doubt that Mr. Boehner, who was among the so-called Gang of Seven in 1994, when Republicans took control of the House and then became entangled in missteps and feuds, does not want a repeat of history.
For instance, in 1994, when Republicans captured both the House and the Senate, Speaker Newt Gingrich and the Senate leader, Bob Dole, both harbored presidential aspirations and worked less in tandem than as adversaries. That division between House and Senate Republicans played to President Bill Clinton’s advantage.
In contrast, Mr. Boehner’s relationship with his Senate counterpart, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, with whom he has worked closely in the past two years to oppose Mr. Obama’s agenda, remains strong.
Finally, there is some opportunity for bipartisan lawmaking, as Democrats and Republicans alike recognize, often privately. The pursuit of alternative energy sources, modest trade agreements, changes to the Bush administration’s signature education act and even adjustments to the tax code are all within reach.
“The big, interesting question is ‘What message does Obama take out of this election? What path does he choose?’ ” said Mr. McConnell, who said spending and debt were potential areas of common ground.
“There will be plenty of Republicans willing to help reduce both,” the senator said. “There are places where he has expressed interest in the past that would be similar to our own interests.”
