Government Shutdown?

This blog began last November in anticipation of a decisive political showdown. Obama's drubbing of Mitt Romney in the presidential election and the epic failure of the Grand Old Party to gain any seats in the House or Senate, despite the deluge of cash unleashed by the plutocrat-friendly Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, portended a route of the Tea Party in the fiscal cliff budget battle that brought 2012 to a close.

Obama won in 2012 thanks to a clear Progressive majority. These are voters who believe in the virtue of government-sponsored social programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and who don't want to be inserted into any more foreign wars of choice. Of the two major party candidates, Obama offered the better choice.

But since last November things have become murkier. The Tea Party caucus, which wags the dog in the House, managed to duel Obama to draw on the fiscal cliff. Giving up a little ground on the top income tax rate, House Republicans earned their spurs back earlier this year by holding fast on the implementation of across the board 10% cuts in government spending known as sequestration.

In the meantime, Obama's political capital has drained away steadily since the election; it's to the point now where it's almost safe to call him a lame duck -- and he has more than three years left in his second term.

Obama's first mistake was during the negotiations to avoid the fiscal cliff he agreed to a Social Security reduction in the form of a chained CPI, contradicting a campaign pledge. The deal he ended up arriving at with Republicans did not include any Social Security cuts, but there was a feeling among his Progressive base that Obama had squandered the tactical high ground offered by the fiscal cliff where the GOP would have been uniformly blamed and despised by voters for raising everyone's taxes in order to avoid a tax increase on the wealthiest. The Progressive base was looking for a decisive battle while the issue of social democracy vs. plutocracy was still front and center from the election campaign. Knowing the fight would have to be fought with the House Republicans eventually, the feeling was better now as we head into a new year.

Obama then lost on the sequester. He made a decision to push for gun control legislation in the wake of the Newtown massacre, and he couldn't deliver on that. Then at the end of summer, Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, attempted to insert the United States in yet another war in the Middle East. Except that this time it would be on the same side as an enemy, Al Qaeda, we have been at war with since 9/11. Voters rebelled and war was avoided thanks to some fancy Russian diplomatic footwork.

That's where we are now. Obama is on the ropes. The bete noire of the Tea Party, the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a., Obamacare, is set to launch on October 1, the same time a new budget has to be approved to avoid a government shutdown. Assuming that can be done, sometime at the end of October the government will reach its debt limit. The House GOP, which must vote to approve raising the debt ceiling, promises default unless Obamacare is de-funded.

Obama is weakened and the majority that elected him is dispirited. This gives the House Republicans enough wiggle room to shut down the government if that is what they really want to do. But I don't think that's what they want. This wouldn't play well with independents. What I read over the weekend, something which makes sense, is that Speaker of the House John Boehner will accept whatever comes over from the Senate and send it back with language delaying enforcement of a tax penalty on filers who can't show proof of health insurance. Then it will be up to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to shut down the government.