Let me begin by saying I don’t think “divides” in a coalition are alarming—any party that’s going to govern a country the size of the United States has to put together disparate groups who aren’t going to always agree. In this case, the divide was between those who wanted to protect the country from tax increases and those who wanted to see spending cuts.

The budget vote revealed a divide between tax-cutters and spending-cutters in the Republican coalition

If you’re in the former group, you have to be reasonably happy with this deal. Marginal tax rates only went up on people making over $400,000 annually. Furthermore, keep in mind that the current tax rates, set in place by the tax cuts passed in 2001—referred to as “the Bush tax cuts” were never permanent. This package locked in about 99 percent of those cuts as permanent.

Unfortunately, payroll taxes rose on millions of middle-to-working class people. But neither party showed any interest there—Republicans were apparently interested in living up to a stereotype, and Democrats define defending the middle class solely by whether they tax the rich, not whether they actually help the middle class.

But spending cuts, which would have gone into effect automatically, without a deal, were completely passed over. The official storyline is that dealing with them has been deferred for a couple months. Right. And two months from now it will be deferred again. Washington’s aversion to cutting spending can be seen in the fact that they chose to use the term “fiscal cliff” to define a process where automatic cuts would kick in. Only politicians would see having to constrain their budget as akin to the end of civilization itself.

House Republicans had a choice to make, between stopping tax increases or allowing spending cuts and they chose the former. It’s a defensible position, but not one I agree with. Out-of-control spending is the biggest problem this government faces and whatever your long-term priorities are—be they liberal or conservative—they are hindered by the rising national debt. Letting tax rates go up a few percentage points in exchange for real cuts was, in my view, a reasonable deal, given the current power distribution in the government. That’s why I still believe ratification of this deal was a mistake.

Dan Flaherty is the author of Fulcrum, an Irish Catholic novel set in postwar Boston with a traditional Democratic mayoral campaign at its heart, and he is the editor-in-chief of TheSportsNotebook.com

Even though I’ve advocated House Republicans being open to compromise, I’ve never suggested they be pushovers and a package this one-sided is much worse than the so-called fiscal cliff, and the House should dismiss the Senate plan for what it is—a politically-driven proposal aimed more at gaining partisan advantage than entering good-faith negotiations with the democratically elected GOP House majority (I include “democratically elected” because liberals seem to have decided that the only way the people spoke on November 6 was to re-elect President Obama and that the Republican House apparently dropped from the sky).

The budget passed by the Senate and Harry Reid is a politically-driven joke.

What possible reason is there for the House to accept this proposal? The badly needed spending cuts go into effect automatically without any action by the government. The only real difference in the tax increases is that the hike in marginal rates will apply at the $400,000 level rather than the $250,000 level. Nothing against those folks making a quarter-mil a year, but I’m not ready to give up the spending cuts to save them a few percentage points on the highest levels of their income.

This is a proposal done purely for show, so the White House and Senate can say they did something, and when their one-sided plan fails, to accuse the House of standing in the way.  The political gamesmanship shows why rank-and-file House Republicans were wrong to undercut their speaker when he wanted a vote on a legitimate compromise deal. Thus, they now stand open to the label “the party of no.” The label is an intellectually vacuous term that means nothing more than “one who disagrees with the president”, but its capacity to stick is increased if the House doesn’t respond.

Ideally, it would have been nice if House Republicans and President Obama would have gotten together, acted like adults and negotiated a reasonable compromise. That hasn’t happened because neither side was interested. Obama wanted to act like he won an election for dictator rather than president. The House majority wanted to hunker down in a bunker and fight a resistance war for the next four years rather than address the national debt.

Thus, even though the House should reject this plan, they bear a fair share of the responsibility for creating the situation that led to this. Now they have to try and get to a reasonable compromise the hard way. And that way is this—since the Senate has passed a plan that’s essentially a Democratic dream, the House should counter and pass a plan that’s a Republican dream.

The process then requires both plans to go into a conference committee where negotiators from each body work out the differences between the two plans, with the compromise submitted to both the House and Senate for a vote. Which is where we should have been in the first place. It’s the long way around the mountain, but apparently no one in Washington does anything the easy way.

That’s enough talk about the so-called fiscal cliff for one day. Now I’m off to watch the Rose Bowl, and as a Wisconsin fan, I fully anticipate jumping off a cliff of a different kind by halftime. Happy New Year, everyone.

Dan Flaherty is the author of Fulcrum, an Irish Catholic novel set in postwar Boston with a traditional Democratic mayoral campaign at its heart, and he is the editor-in-chief of TheSportsNotebook.com

During a pro-forma session of the House of Representatives last Thursday (video of which can be found here) Congressional Chaplain Fr. Patrick Conroy offered the following prayer:

God of all creation, we give You thanks for giving us another day

As this Chamber lies silent still, we pray for hope, as many Americans experience anxiety about their future

Send a spirit of wisdom and good judgment upon the leaders of Congress, that they might forge a solution to assuage the concerns of their fellow citizens

Send us your spirit so that there might be peace on earth and goodwill among all men and women

May all that is done this day be for Your greater honor and glory

Amen

It is interesting to note that of the fifty-two chaplains who have overseen the House of Representatives, only two have been Roman Catholic priests: Fr. Daniel Coughlin (2000) and Fr. Patrick Conroy (2011).

Congressional Chaplains receive approximately five seconds of media coverage during their entire tenure, but the role they play, spiritually speaking, is enormous.

Fr. Conroy, by the way, was ordained a priest in 1983 and hails Oregon, where he was a teacher, adviser and coach at Jesuit High School in Beaverton. More info on him can be found here.

What is disturbing is what this whole process says about our political system—both parties seem to agree, or at least give lip service to the idea, that what lies ahead on New Year’s must be avoided, but they’re unable to reach an agreement.  Has our political system failed?

This is a common theme expressed by pundits on either side of the ideological divide, and I understand where they’re coming from. But the “political system” is the same one that was faced by political foes like former president Ronald Reagan and former Speaker Tip O’Neill. But when all was said and done—and a lot was said—they managed to work out a deal. And according to those that knew them, maintained a friendship along with it.

To say the system has failed lets the fools that run and bankroll the system off the hook.

We could go back through American history and find any number of instances of a Congress and White House controlled by different parties, throwing hostile rhetoric out, but still finding a way to work out their differences in the end.

Therefore, to blame it on “the system” lets off the hook the people who are in office, and the well-organized ideological groups that put them there and keep the pressure on. A toxic environment has been created where anyone who even speaks of compromise is publicly branded a traitor and potentially faces a primary challenge. If this environment is what one means by “the system” then I agree that it has failed

I find it ironic that I have to make this argument, because I’m usually sympathetic to the view that one should stand on principle, create clear choices for the American public, and if you lose the next election, so be it. But we just had that election. And we still have a Republican House, a Democratic president and a $16 trillion debt. Are we supposed to wait two—maybe four—more years before doing anything?

This is why I find the actions of people like Nancy Pelosi, who resist even mild reforms like raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 to be self-absorbed political nonsense. Or the actions of the rank-and-file House Republicans, who rejected their own speaker’s efforts to negotiate a reasonable compromise on tax rates on the upper brackets to be completely self-indulgent.

If this were six months prior to an election, I wouldn’t feel that way—in the months leading up to an election, the public interest is best served by creating clear choices. But there comes to a time when one has to accept the election results and work with what we have.

I am not suggesting that one give ground on vital questions of Catholic moral doctrine, but the issues at stake in the budget debate all surround prudential judgments on the level of taxes and spending.

Its one thing to make sure your side of the debate gets its fair share in negotiations. It’s quite another to act like you run the entire government when you plainly don’t.  Obama’s apologists don’t get that. Those in the Republican House that undermined Boehner don’t get it either.

The time to campaign will come again, but when it comes to tax and budget policy it’s not right now. If the current political environment requires a perpetual campaign, then it’s this poisonous cloud—not the system—that needs to be fumigated.

Dan Flaherty is the author of Fulcrum, an Irish Catholic novel set in postwar Boston with a traditional Democratic mayoral campaign at its heart, and he is the editor-in-chief of TheSportsNotebook.com

And unlike “double down”, which often made sense in light of the point the candidate was trying to make, “fiscal cliff” is not an accurate description of reality. Here’s what it is—on January 1, if the Congress and the White House cannot agree on a deficit reduction plan, an automatic package of tax increases and spending cuts go into effect.

What some call a fiscal cliff others might call real deficit reduction in an era of divided government.

The notable tax increase is a boost in the top marginal income tax rate for 35 to 39 percent—in effect, the repeal of the Bush tax cut and restoration of Clinton-era marginal rates. The spending cuts are an across-the-board cut in spending in all programs, save Social Security and veterans benefits, which are exempt. Whether you like each individual idea or hate it, when you consider it as a package, does it really merit a term like “fiscal cliff” that implies the end of civilization awaits?

I’d say this sounds like a reasonable compromise. When it comes to the tax rates, Obama won the election and his view on this topic was no secret. Whether it’s the solution I would come up with or the GOP would come up with is really not relevant right now.

But on the flip side, the Republicans hold an expanded majority in the House of Representatives—unlike Obama, who won a smaller share of the vote in 2012 than he did in his genuine mandate year of 2008, House Republicans won more seats in 2012 than they did in their own genuine tidal wave year of 2010. The views of GOP House members on tax and spending policy are no more a secret than Obama’s and since the House is where all tax and spending bills must originate, they too have a right to a 50/50 solution. And an across-the-board spending reduction is a good place to start.

There is fear that the tax increases and spending cuts will trigger another recession, but what’s the alternative? At what point does our focus on the short-term take a back-seat to our real long-term deficit reduction needs? And the fact remains that even this “fiscal cliff” is rather modest.

The mix of taxes and spending cuts wouldn’t be exactly what I would propose. It wouldn’t be what President Obama or House Republicans would do if either party had won a governing majority. What it will do is reduce the deficit. That’s why I’m rooting for gridlock these next seven weeks and forcing the enactment of this package.

Or maybe I should say I’m doubling down on the idea of going over the fiscal cliff. That’s language our leaders could understand.

President Obama’s allies have rushed to claim a “mandate”, as have all previous presidential winners before him. If by “mandate”, they mean that officeholders in the Congress—also democratically elected in their own right—have some obligation to roll over for whatever the president desires, than I disagree.

We might recall the late Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill refused to grant any vague “mandate” privilege to Ronald Reagan after the latter was re-elected in 1984—an election Reagan won with 59 percent of the vote and carrying 49 states. Even less does current GOP speaker John Boehner owe a mandate to a president re-elected by only two percentage points in the popular vote.

But Boehner’s claims of a mandate of his own are equally silly, and as the debt skyrockets,  with China buying it up and gaining increasing leverage on the United States, both the Speaker and the President are going to have to come to some kind of deal and then sell their parties on it.

President Obama & Speaker Boehner have no choice but learn to work with each other--and they better do it fast.

The reality is that a $16 trillion debt doesn’t get solved without unpopular solutions, including solutions all of us aren’t going to like. Solving the debt is more important than the pet agendas a lot of us would like to see enacted—for me it’s the up-front costs of transitioning Social Security and Medicare to private accounts and vouchers. For others it might be a sweeping tax cut or an expansive new federal program. Those are the goodies, but the prerequisite to doing anything is a real plan to contain the national debt, as politically unromantic as that might be.

Neither side has been honest with the American public. Obama has pretended raising taxes a few percentage points on a few extremely rich people will enable him to cut the deficit  and still invest more in education and job training. Republicans, still living in the world Ronald Reagan inherited in 1981 can’t get beyond tax-cutting. Both agendas are going to have to be shelved.

A starting point for negotiation might be this—give Obama what we wants regarding the modest tax hike on the upper brackets. The rates going from 35 to 39 percent are not the difference between capitalism and socialism. But Boehner, and his strengthened Republican majority have a right to significant concessions of their own.

It’s long past time the left wing of the Democratic Party recognize that the wealthiest of the elderly don’t need to keep collecting Social Security, or get Medicare benefits. Republicans tried to broach this topic in the early 1980s and again in 1986, were demonized for it, lost big in congressional elections and learned their lesson—that the Democrats couldn’t be trusted to deal honestly with them on Social Security and Medicare

But these two programs are where the money is at. So perhaps Boehner should take Obama up on his offer—start the debt reduction by asking their wealthiest to pay a little more—but insist that the president himself get out front of taking the richest off Social Security, make it clear to the Left that the time has come for this change and stop the charade of one party playing ‘gotcha’ with the other.

Boehner wouldn’t be popular in his own party if he sold a modest tax hike on the upper brackets as part of a debt deal. Obama would lose the “cool kid” status he covets so much with his own base if he pushed for this type of Social Security reform. But in the loss of popularity and coolness, both could gain a new title—leader. It’s time for both men to start acting like one.

Dan Flaherty is the author of Fulcrum, an Irish Catholic novel set in postwar Boston with a traditional Democratic mayoral campaign at its heart, and he is the editor-in-chief of TheSportsNotebook.com