President Obama’s sequester strategy: Divide and conquer - POLITICO.com Print View

President Obama’s sequester strategy: Divide and conquer - POLITICO.com Print View

President Obama’s sequester strategy: Divide and conquer By: Carrie Budoff Brown February 26, 2013 04:42 AM EST

President Barack Obama broke Republicans once on taxes — and his risky strategy for winning the sequester fight assumes he’ll do it again. He will divide, isolate and defeat Republicans using all the powers of his office and all his skills as a political campaigner. As Americans grow frustrated with the cuts, Republicans will reject their party’s no-tax mantra and demand that Congress end the standoff, even if it means raising some new revenue – just the way Obama is demanding. (PHOTOS: What they’re saying about sequestration) Obama’s trying to speed this result, by releasing state by state details of the pain and suffering the sequester will cause, all meant to get Republicans to cave. And he’s got the biggest megaphone, hammering this message over and over in a way the divided Republican party cannot. Except that message could cut both ways. What if the public agrees that yes, there is a lot of pain and suffering – and turns to Obama wondering, why didn’t you do more to prevent it? That’s what makes some Democrats nervous about the White House’s supreme level of confidence. (Also on POLITICO: Obama: 'We've got to do some governing') Democratic lawmakers, who are unclear about the end game, could succumb to the same public offensive that Obama has been ginning up against Republicans and start demanding that the White House cut its losses and move on to other important second-term initiatives. A GOP proposal to give flexibility to the agency heads on deciding how to administer the cuts could start looking attractive to Democrats as a way out. But Obama is certain of his strategy there, too. He believes the results of the November election show that the public endorses his vision, and that he label Republicans as the protectors of the rich who stubbornly refuse to adopt his fair “balanced” approach of cuts and new revenues. (Also on POLITICO: Is Obama telling truth about sequestration?) “You’re already starting to see some Republicans grow increasingly uncomfortable with the current position of the leadership of their party. And our hope is that those numbers grow and the leadership feels pressure,” White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said. “The Republican Party position right now is that the wealthy should never pay another dime to reduce our deficit, it should be done entirely on the backs of the middle class and seniors. I don’t think it’s a particularly tenable position over the long term, and maybe opinions will change.” So far, he’s got reason to feel confident, as polls shows voters blaming the GOP for the sequester cuts more than the president. Whether that holds after the cuts start to take effect March 1 is less clear. A senior administration official argued that Republicans are in a worse position than during the fiscal cliff fight, arguing that the only thing more popular than raising tax rates on the wealthy is closing loopholes that benefit them. When asked what gave the White House such confidence in its strategy, the official ticked through House Speaker John Boehner’s evolution on raising tax rates during the fiscal cliff negotiations — from being opposed in early November to supporting $600 billion in tax rate hikes by New Year’s Eve. Obama is betting that Republican opposition to taxes will wear thin not only with the public but among their own ranks in Congress and in statehouses around the country. The White House is watching for every senator, representative and governor who breaks with the Republican leadership. With each new voice — which the White House will no doubt highlight — the hope is that Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) look increasingly detached from reality. When Obama travels Tuesday to a shipyard in Newport News, Va., he’ll deliver a speech that sounds very much like the statements that Republican Sens. John McCain, Kelly Ayotte and Lindsey Graham delivered when they visited the area last July, an administration official said. The trio used that trip to call for compromise. Graham conceded that it would be uncomfortable for some Republicans to consider eliminating tax breaks but added that “the time for being petty is over,” according to a report in the Daily Press of Hampton Roads, Va. But for now, at least, Republican leaders are putting up a united front. Even though many voted for the fiscal cliff deal, Republicans feel burned by the lopsided nature of that agreement and are digging in against Obama’s insistence that they close tax loopholes to pay down the sequester. “The president says we have to have another tax increase in order to avoid the sequester,” Boehner said during a press availability Monday. “Well, Mr. President, you got your tax increase. It’s time to cut spending here in Washington.” If Republicans hold firm, the White House will look to its next major point of leverage: the real-life hassle of the sequester itself. Once people feel the pain, Republicans will want to find a way out, the theory goes. “As much as the rhetoric is out there that they can’t have the sequester, there must have been a conclusion on the part of his advisers that if it goes into effect, they have more leverage,” said Bill Hoagland, who was a top budget aide to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and is senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Had they not wanted it to take effect, negotiations would’ve begun in January.” But it would make for a messy March. That’s when Obama had hoped the Senate would move forward on an immigration reform proposal. He’s still waiting for Congress to take up gun control. Each initiative relies on bipartisan cooperation, which would only suffer while the parties go to battle on the budget. The last major pressure point won’t come until the end of March, when Congress needs to pass legislation renewing funding for the government. Obama can decide to use that resolution as a vehicle for ending the standoff, warning that he won’t sign any bill that assumes the sequester cuts are permanent. The White House hasn’t said whether Obama will take that course, but Democratic lawmakers will be looking for some hint this week of the president’s endgame. Hoagland said the government funding fight is “the real cliff” and one that could return leverage to the White House. ”I don’t see any way on God’s green earth that Republicans want a government shutdown,” Hoagland said. “It is never one that wins a lot of plaudits out there.” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said he doesn’t expect the standoff to go on that long because the pain will be felt “right away.” Like Boehner and McConnell, Kaine said he also received a call last week from the president, who was “pushing a solution, asking what I thought about my colleagues.” “I do hope that this week there is more of that on the phone and in person,” Kaine said.