Boehner’s challenge going into the recent spending debate was that many of the 87 newly elected GOP congressmen had campaigned on promises of $100 billion in cuts this year. Reports that Boehner’s negotiating position was initially $32 billion in cuts infuriated his caucus. He upped it to $61 billion, eventually coming to terms on an agreement that was said to contain spending reductions of $38.5 billion. “One way of looking at it is that Boehner secured two-thirds of his $61-billion goal while controlling only one-third of the federal government,” notes Sabato. During the negotiations, he kept a close read on his own caucus. “His style is one of listening and consensus-building,” said Madden. But he avoided tipping his own hand. “He keeps his opponents in his own party and Democrats off guard,” added Zelizer.
In the process, he sounded more like a pragmatist than an ideologue. “It’s never been lost on me that because we only control the House there are a lot of other players that we need to work with in order to come to any agreement to keep the government open,” Boehner said on March 16. Says Zelizer: “He didn’t want a dramatic last stand or high-profile confrontation with Obama. He wanted to cut a deal that was generally favourable to Republicans.”
Boehner will need all the clout he can muster when lawmakers return from recess on May 2. The main item on the agenda will be negotiations over raising the legal limit on how much money the U.S. government is authorized to borrow—something many Tea Party Republicans pledged they would not do. “Boehner got through the challenge, but he’s not home safe,” says Sabato. The government is expected to reach the current debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion by mid-May, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said the federal government could risk defaulting on its debt obligations or stop issuing Social Security cheques unless Congress authorizes the borrowing of more money.
Boehner has said he is in favour of raising the debt ceiling, but that the move would have to be accompanied by additional spending cuts. Again, he’ll face a resistant right flank within his own caucus, and a White House that would prefer the debt ceiling be raised with no strings attached. And after that, there is the little matter of the 2012 budget—and tackling America’s long-term deficit spending.
As he faces these tasks, Boehner may find kinship with another contemporary politician who prefers deal-making to ideological grandstanding, and whose biggest challenge is keeping the support of his own party while searching for common ground with the other side. His name is Barack Obama. “These are two guys who, in the end, the last hour of negotiation, are both men whose inclination is to say, ‘let’s make a deal’—not, ‘let’s create a tense situation,’ ” adds Zelizer. “They are well matched in that way.”
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