Bo has got their back, as long as they stick by what they're saying
There really aren't any subtleties to parse here in Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's
answers to questions posed by John Harwood of
The New York Times. First on the debt limit:
Q. The speaker says we need dollar for dollar spending cuts in return for a rise in the debt limit. Some conservatives have talked about linking the defunding of the health care law to a rise in the debt limit. Both of those are total nonstarters?
A. John, the president has been very clear. We are not going to be negotiating over the debt limit.
And then on funding the government:
Q. Is there any circumstance under which the administration would accept either a delay in parts of Obamacare or a defunding of parts of Obamacare?
A. No.
You can't be more clear than that, and as long as President Obama is serious about standing firm, Republicans simply don't have the leverage to turn their hostage taking dreams into reality. And one reason to believe Lew and the president are serious this time around is that Lew essentially acknowledges that what happened in 2011 was a mistake:
I think we saw in 2011 the danger of going down the path of having the kind of negotiation over the debt limit that you have over other issues. The debt limit is just different. It’s just different. There cannot be any question. We are a country that pays our bills.
There's no doubt that there will be negotiations over funding levels in the annual spending bills—that's a normal part of the process. But President Obama and his administration have been pretty clear near now for nearly two years that they will never again engage in the sort of brinksmanship that they participated in back in 2011. Obviously, we won't know until the process is over whether they stand by what they are saying, but everything they are saying indicates that they are committed to avoiding a replay of 2011.