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| President Barack Obama speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington on Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013. Lawmakers Wednesday voted to avoid a financial default and reopen the government after a 16-day partial shutdown. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- By most measures, President Barack Obama emerged far stronger
than his Republican adversaries in Washington's latest fiscal fight. He
gave away virtually nothing and his hard-line tactics exposed deep
divisions among Republicans and growing public frustration with the GOP.
But
Obama's victory came with strings attached. Under his watch, big swaths
of the federal government were shuttered for 16 days, forcing hundreds
of thousands of workers off the job and restricting many services. The
nation was brought to the brink of a default for the second time in two
years. And Congress' last-minute deal generated yet another round of
looming deadlines on the same issues, with no guarantee that Republican
opposition to Obama's objectives will be dampened in any way.
"What
comes next is very unpredictable," said Steve Schmidt, a Republican
strategist. "The notion that this group of people is going to be
chastened by this, while it seems obvious, is uncertain."
Indeed,
there's little consensus among Republicans about how to proceed in the
aftermath of the budget crisis. Some conservatives who demanded changes
to Obama's health care law in exchange for funding the government have
signaled they're ready to dig in for another fight. Among them is Kansas
Rep. Tim Huelskamp, who said Republicans may have "lost the battle but
we're going to win the war."
But other GOP lawmakers are demanding that their party make a course correction.
"Hopefully, the lesson is to stop this foolish childishness," said John McCain, the longtime Arizona senator.
Republicans
will have to quickly settle on a strategy. The deal that ended this
month's standoff only keeps the government open through Jan. 15 and
extends borrowing authority through Feb. 7, though emergency measures
may give the administration another month before reaching the debt
limit. The agreement also requires bipartisan negotiators to issue a
report by Dec. 13 on broader budget issues like spending levels, deficit
reduction and entitlement reforms - all matters over which the White
House and congressional Republicans have long been at odds.
What
happens during this next round of deadlines will help clarify whether
Obama's October win has done anything to alter the political dynamic in
Washington or whether it was an isolated achievement.
The
White House said the president is entering the next phase of the debate
with a similarly unyielding strategy. Aides said he is willing to make
concessions as part of a larger budget deal but won't let Republicans
make funding the government or lifting the debt ceiling contingent on
certain outcomes.
Some GOP leaders had assumed
Obama would abandon that hard-line stance during the most recent
debate. Many were taking their lessons from the last budget and debt
fight in 2011, when Obama indeed made concessions to keep the government
open and avoid a default.
But Republicans
misread how political shifts in Washington over the past two years had
affected the president, and in particular how Obama's resolve had been
stiffened by the fact he doesn't have to run for office again. Staunch
conservatives also ignored warnings from more moderate Republicans, who
argued that Obama would never agree to changes in the health care law
that remains his signature legislative achievement.
"A
fundamental flaw - and probably the biggest flaw - was that they were
negotiating for something that wasn't really negotiable," said Patrick
Griffin, who served as President Bill Clinton's legislative affairs
director during the 1995 government shutdown.
The
start of the government shutdown coincided with the start of sign-ups
for the "Obamacare" law's health insurance exchanges - a rollout that
was marred by widespread problems. In an ironic twist, the Republican
insistence on shutting down the government in order to make changes to
the law wound up overshadowing its glitches and a glaring embarrassment
for the president.
The result of the
Republican miscalculations: a wave of public opinion polls showing that
the GOP took the biggest hit as the budget war dragged on. A Washington
Post-ABC News survey released Monday found 74 percent disapproved of the
way the Republicans in Congress were handling negotiations over the
federal budget, up 11 points since just before the shutdown began. Views
on how Obama and congressional Democrats handled the budget battle
tilted negative but did not change significantly over the course of the
shutdown.
Despite their dour approval ratings,
Republicans may again try to test whether Obama is willing to hold his
hard line in the new year. But Obama - long a believer in the power of
public opinion - is banking that the anger Americans aimed at
Republicans in recent weeks will persuade them to shift course.
"The
Republicans recognize this was not a good strategy and seeing the
horrible reaction from the American people, I'm pretty sure they're not
going to run this play again," the president said.
