10:00am | Now that the Republicans have stormed the House and U.S. voters’ frustration over the economy has been made loud and clear, one large question remains: What now?
“It’s the question hanging over Obama: What will he do next?” states a CNN story on Wednesday following the election.
“When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, President Bill Clinton was still able to get a balanced budget and major welfare reform and when George W. Bush was elected in 2000 with a 50-50 Senate, Bush ended up passing his tax cuts and signature No Child Left Behind education reform law, among other big initiatives,” the story states.
Not everyone holds out such optimism.
“Are we going to have two years of stalemates?” That’s the question being posed by Charles Noble, a political science professor at Cal State Long Beach. “That’s a possibility,” he quickly answers, adding, “If that’s the case, we won’t get much done.”
Noble notes that Republicans only took the House, not the Senate. And that means both sides of the aisle need to come to terms to make progress on any government business in both the House and Senate. It also means the Republicans have to work with President Obama, just like he now has to work with the GOP.
And there’s another party, beside the Democrats, the Republicans must work with—the Tea Party. That party ran on change and stopping the changes implemented by the party in power, a stark contrast from the olive branches now being offered by Obama and those on the winning side of this election. “Lately we’ve seen a lot of frustration in the Tea Party movement,” Noble says. “Now you have the Republican Party caught between the imperatives of government and a political agenda.”
The leaves presumptive Speaker John Boehner between the proverbial rock and hard place, Noble says. “The way I see it, he has three choices.”
No. 1, he can work with Obama, which would likely draw clamorous opposition the Tea Party. The second option: he can critique the White House and be obstructive, and risk driving home the “party of no” image the GOP has been mantled with in the last two years. Or Boehner can block everything that comes from Obama and the Democrats, including legislation required to keep the country running, and “shut down the government,” Noble states. “And that could hurt the party in the 2012 election,” he adds.
For his part, Obama took responsibility for the “shellacking” Democrats endured on Election Day and promised to negotiate with resurgent Republicans on issues including tax-cut extensions, energy and education, the president said in a speech on Wednesday. He also “offered an olive branch to U.S. corporations, which he said must feel they’re ‘always painted as the bad guy,’ in controversies such as the Gulf oil spill, Wall Street bonus flap and health-care revamp,” a Wall Street Journal article states.
However, Obama even stated he would be willing to revisit small provisions in his healthcare bill, even as Boehner restated the Republican campaign promise to undo the healthcare bill.
There’s also the drastic difference the two parties have in how to approach kick-starting the lingering effects of the recession. The Republicans want to reward entrepreneurs and keep government out of the way of Wall Street, while Democrats seem to believe further stimulus may be in order.
The Federal Reserve, for its part, continues to believe the latter is in order. In its meeting on Wednesday, the Fed just announced it will buy $600 Billion dollars worth of treasuries, a move designed to spur the economy through its first round of Quantitative Easing.
“This easing is expected to last through the first of June, and mirrors sentiments that the Fed was going to buy approximately $75 Billion dollars per month of government treasuries,” a story by the Examiner states. “The Fed also commented that they are leaving interest rates unchanged.”
Considering the myriad approaches people in charge would take to heal the economy at a more rapid pace, and the chance that putting more Republicans in the House may stagnate government action about as it much as it may serve to fix things, the voice of the voters may have been a loud cry out over lackluster U.S. economic growth, but what exactly was being said may not be so clear, says Noble.
“It’s not all that clear what the message was,” he says.
[Ed. note] For opinion and public discussion about what the election means for Long Beach, the East Anaheim Street Business Alliance will tonight hold a post-election roundtable for insight on how the mid-term elections will play out long-term for the city, state and nation. The event will be held from 6:30-8:00pm at the Long Beach Playhouse (5021 E. Anaheim Street) and admission is free, but seating is limited to 200 guests. Confirmed speakers include Mayor Bob Foster, Vice Mayor Suja Lowenthal, City Councilmembers Gary DeLong and Patrick O’Donnell, Long Beach Chamber of Commerce President Randy Gordon, Long Beach Post publisher Shaun Lumachi and more.