When President Obama addressed the nation on Monday night about the stumbling effort to raise the federal borrowing limit, he notably chose not to issue any explicit threat to veto Speaker Boehner’s proposal, which is expected to get a vote in the House on Wednesday. Obama suggested the legislation was undesirable, even unhelpful, but not necesssarily unacceptable. “The new approach that Speaker Boehner unveiled today, which would temporarily extend the debt ceiling in exchange for spending cuts, would force us to once again face the threat of default just six months from now,” he said. “In other words, it doesn’t solve the problem.”
The White House tried to makes its demands more credible on Tuesday by inching toward an explicit threat. “If [Boehner's bill] is presented to the President, the President’s senior advisers would recommend that he veto this bill,” read an official statement of administration policy released Tuesday afternoon. Recommend.
This is the nut of Obama’s bargaining dilemma: Balanced budget amendments and total transformations of the social safety net are one thing, but what Boehner is now offering doesn’t have enough ideological tug to out-pull the political black hole that would be opened by cracking the debt ceiling on Aug. 2. Being the first President to have U.S. debt downgraded on his watch would be bruising enough, but whoever “won” or “lost” the round of recriminations that would surely follow a failure to reach a deal, Obama would still lose. The global economic damage wrought by a crisis of confidence in U.S. credit would far surpass any August spin war, and it could irreparably damage Obama’s chances of re-election.
Of course, it would be false to say that Obama currently faces a choice between one or the other, and this veto scenario would only arise if the Boehner’s plan were to pass the House, with its angsty freshman, and the dusty Democratic Senate. The White House and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, naturally, say that’s not going to happen. “We do not believe it will pass the Senate,” White House Press Secretary said on Tuesday. Believe. The Administration is leaving themselves wiggle room pretty often these days. They don’t have much choice.
