Why Can’t Joe Be More Like Mike?
President Biden could learn a lot from how Michael Corleone responds to threats
I've watched Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part II more times than I care to admit. If I’m being honest, I consider Coppola’s sequel to The Godfather not just one of the best films in its genre but one of the greatest films ever made. Part of the price my children pay for having me as their father is a mandatory viewing of the first two films (I love them too much to make them watch The Godfather III) in Coppola’s chronicle of the rise and fall of the Corleone family.
At this point in the trilogy, the Corleone family has relocated to Lake Tahoe to infiltrate the casino industry. One of the film’s most memorable scenes occurs during a communion celebration at Michael Corleone’s Nevada estate.
In a side meeting, fictional Nevada senator Pat Geary, played by G.D. Spradlin, tells Corleone, played by Al Pacino, he expects to receive a substantial bribe in exchange for helping Corleone acquire a casino gaming license.
Michael’s cold-as-ice reply to Geary’s demand is iconic in its brevity. It is so embedded into the cultural lexicon folks who’ve never even seen the film use it in gifs and memes:
“My offer is this. Nothing.”
When Kevin McCarthy began his economic terrorism maneuver regarding the debt ceiling, President Biden’s reaction should have been a version of Corleone’s “nothing.” He should've told the weakest House speaker in recent memory to fly a proverbial kite.
Instead, he did what he said he'd never do—he blinked. By doing so, he allowed Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans to turn the United States government—and us—into their hostages.
McCarthy’s Senator Geary moment
Like Senator Geary’s pull-aside in The Godfather Part II, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy wanted to squeeze President Biden into a deal that would've taken a hatchet to everything Biden’s accomplished so far.
But based on what we know, Biden didn't give away the farm. Biden managed to come away from the negotiations with Social Security and Medicaid unscathed. McCarthy got much less than what Republicans wanted. It almost feels like Biden gave him just enough to save face.
Take the GOP’s goal of slashing the $80 billion in new Internal Revenue Service funding in its entirety. Indeed, the deal shifts $10 billion from the agency in fiscal 2024 and 2025; however, text from the proposed agreement from the House released Sunday indicates Biden only agreed to take $1 billion from the IRS with additional cuts over the next two years during the appropriations process. According to the IRS, they’ll be just fine.
Biden caved on work requirements for federal assistance programs like TANF and SNAP, which, per the Harvard Gazette, failed miserably in my home state of Arkansas. This was a red line for Democrats; however, compared to McCarthy’s marching orders, the changes seem relatively modest.
McCarthy is accountable to the will of the extremists who gave him the speakership, accountable to a group of crazies who view Biden, and thus the rest of us, as hostages. They’re just fine with a U.S. default because they think it helps them politically. Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel has said as much.
Given that a large contingent of his caucus is bat-shit crazy, McCarthy has to behave publicly as if a debt ceiling increase contingent on spending cuts is as rational as calling a spendthrift teenager to heel.
The Republicans’ sudden frugality is even more disingenuous because when they control the House and Senate, they spend money like it’s going out of style. Only when a Democrat enters the White House do they care about lowering the deficit.
For example, although Bill Clinton left office with a surplus, George W. Bush still ran up a deficit of about $1.4 trillion. Even considering spending related to the financial crisis, Obama reduced the deficit he inherited from Bush by more than half.
Excluding Covid-related spending, which was bipartisan, the Trump tax cuts blew a $2 trillion hole in the federal deficit. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the current Republican proposal to make the Trump tax cuts permanent would add $3.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.
By the way, during the Trump presidency, Congress raised the debt ceiling three times, no strings attached:
In 2017, 2018, and 2019 Congress approved measures to lift the ceiling shortly before it was reached. All three times, Congress didn’t vote to raise the limit by a specific amount, the way they usually do, and the way they most recently did in 2021 when Biden was in office. Instead, they voted to suspend the limit altogether, allowing the Treasury to borrow the funds it needed at will. Then, when the suspension was over, a new ceiling was automatically installed based on how much the Treasury had borrowed in the interim. [In 2021, Democrats held majorities in both chambers.]
Sure, things could have been worse. That’s not the point.
Despite their history of bad-faith arguments, Republican messaging spooked the White House into the same error Obama made in 2011. Back then, Republicans went so far off the rails they rejected their own deficit reduction report.
Granted, this deal seems a lot better than the last debt ceiling crisis. Still, Biden allowed Republicans to use the full faith and credit of the United States as a political bargaining chip. So once again, Democrats allow the Republicans to skirt regular order under the guise of bipartisanship.
Here’s the problem with normalizing this toxic behavior: if the GOP holds the House and Biden is in the White House in 2025 (when the debt ceiling deal expires), McCarthy ( or his replacement) will come back for even more hostages. Sooner or later, the country’s luck will run out. That is why you don’t negotiate with terrorists, especially those of the economic variety.
By the way, if you’re wondering how Senator Geary’s plan to squeeze Michael Corleone went, things didn’t work out so well. Suffice it to say the family doesn’t respond well to threats.
The next time Republicans try to take hostages, maybe a staffer should slip a copy of The Godfather: Part II into President Biden’s daily briefing.
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