Liberal Money, Conservative Money

The battle rages in the United States over budget cutbacks — Obama’s Democrats could benefit from that.

Will history repeat itself or will it all just become a farce? The United States faces forced closure of its government offices because Congress can’t agree on a budget. If the experience of 1995/1996 holds true, the Republicans will be making a huge mistake in their struggle for power and Barack Obama will come out the winner just as Bill Clinton did. In politics, the citizens hold the power. They may complain about government in general, but when popular government services disappear, they get upset.

The fact is, this confrontation affords Obama an opportunity to pave the way for his reelection in 2012.

The decisive questions: Are conditions today as they were in 1996 and will Obama capitalize on them as Clinton did?

America understands the Republican call for spending cuts since the debt has grown more serious. Clinton engaged in open combat with conservatives in 1996 and successfully charmed the electorate. Obama, on the other hand, reacts cautiously. Surveys show the public blames both parties equally for the budget stalemate, much as they did just before the government shutdown in 1996. Opinion didn’t begin to turn against the Republicans until the impact of the shutdown began to become apparent. It didn’t help that Newt Gingrich, then Republican leader, came off as arrogant. His successor, John Boehner, has learned from that.

It’s apparent Boehner doesn’t have his party members under control. Had it been up to Boehner, a compromise would have been reached already. The $60 billion in cuts the Democrats agreed to would now be touted as a Republican victory. But that historic record victory isn’t enough for the newly elected representatives backed by the tea party. They want to force their ideology through, along with their budget cuts: no funding for family planning unless abortion is totally forbidden; get rid of the Environmental Protection Agency because it’s seen as a hindrance to the energy industry; no support for public broadcasting because it’s considered “leftist.”

The Germans find it astonishing to see how brutally the battle over the U.S. budget is waged. Congressional powers over the budget are far greater than they are here in Europe. It’s difficult to imagine that government employees in Germany would ever be forcibly furloughed. The courts would probably rule that withholding wages wasn’t socially acceptable.

The verdict is in the hands of the voters in the United States. The inflexible Republican position is harming the conservatives as it frightens off the independents. Boehner recognizes that, yet fears the next step: He has to tell his fringe radicals that the moderate majority in the Republican Party favors a budget compromise with the Democrats over allowing them to stampede the party into an electoral defeat in the next election.

Now it’s up to Obama as to whether he can exploit the Republican dilemma as successfully as Bill Clinton did.