The political impasse in Washington over the so-called "fiscal cliff" has left all sides, particularly Republicans, politically battered. Some in the GOP think they can achieve entitlement spending reductions, using the coming debt ceiling increase as leverage.
A better path would be for GOP congressional leaders to pass an increase in the debt ceiling without preconditions and at the same time resume regular congressional order for annual passage of budget and appropriations bills. They should use this process to educate the public as to the magnitude of our fiscal dilemma and challenge the Senate and President Barack Obama to confront the debt issue.
The nature of our political system is that the president commands the most public attention. As in the recent battle over the debt ceiling, the public and media overwhelmingly focus on the drama of the deadline with little attention paid to the underlying substantive arguments on either side.
House Speaker John Boehner was mistaken in assuming that having been re-elected, Obama would desire a major agreement on taxes and entitlement spending. Obama was having none of it. He insisted on higher tax rates without meaningful spending reforms, even though his tax increases amounted to a piddling 8 percent of the deficit.
The tax deal not only raised tax rates on ordinary taxable income above $400,000 for singles and $450,000 for married couples; it also restored limits on deductions for singles earning gross incomes of at least $250,000 and couples earning more than $300,000.
Ironically, after a decade of lambasting the "Bush tax cuts," Obama and the Democrats have now embraced most of them. The dirty little secret is that the vast majority of the Bush tax cuts went to the middle class. Over the past 10 years, taxes were reduced approximately $3.8 trillion. Fully $3 trillion of these tax cuts went to lower and middle-class taxpayers, while only $800 billion went to those earning over $250,000.
But you don't hear Obama or his party explaining it that way. Instead, they're already plotting even higher taxes on the top 2 percent of taxpayers, which will still not generate enough revenue to make a real dent in our deficit.
This brings us back to spending. Obama has yet to provide leadership on the deficit and the need to reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Given his recent rhetoric, it isn't likely he plans to do so either.
The problem is that within just a few years, spending on these three programs plus interest on the debt will consume every single dollar of federal revenue. The government projects spending to consume approximately 23 percent of gross domestic product but tax revenue to only generate about 16 percent of GDP, creating annual deficits of $1 trillion each year for the foreseeable future.
The GOP has so far been unsuccessful at explaining these sorry facts to the public. Indeed, most of the public is oblivious to reality and believes that the budget can be balanced by reducing financially irrelevant items like foreign aid.
Obama, the one person who could marshal public attention on this issue, simply refuses to do so. Instead, he plots another trap for the GOP on the debt ceiling.
The House should not fall into this trap again. The GOP should pass a clean debt ceiling extension and go about the business of passing budget and appropriations measures that detail their plans to save the nation from financial catastrophe. Such action will force Senate Democrats and the president to finally be specific and move the discussion away from these absurd political cliffs.
The GOP should also set forth ideas to spur economic growth through tax simplification, domestic energy development, immigration reform and better schools.
The House should not delude itself into thinking that Obama wants to negotiate a "grand bargain" on the debt. He doesn't. The sooner Boehner and his colleagues come to realize this fact the better.
John J. Faso is the former minority leader of the Assembly. He was the Republican candidate for governor in 2006. He is now an Albany-based attorney.