Krauthammer: The Half-Trillion Plan

The debt ceiling looms. Confusion reigns. Schemes abound. We are deep in a hole with, as of now, only three ways out: the McConnell plan, the G6 plan and the Half-Trillion plan.
  
-- The McConnell essentially punts the issue till after Election Day 2012. A good last resort if nothing else works.
  
-- The G6, proposed by the bipartisan Gang of Six senators, reduces 10-year debt by roughly $4 trillion. It has some advantages, even larger flaws.
  
-- The Half-Trillion raises the debt ceiling by that amount in return for an equal amount of spending cuts. At the current obscene rate of deficit spending -- about $100 billion a month -- it yields about five months respite before the debt ceiling is reached again.
  
In my view, the Half-Trillion is best: It is clean, straightforward, yields real cuts, averts the current crisis and provides until year-end to negotiate a bigger deal. At the same time, it punctures President Obama's thus far politically successful strategy of proposing nothing in public, nothing in writing, nothing with numbers, while leaking through a pliant press supposed offers of surpassing scope and reasonableness.
  
As part of this pose, Obama had threatened to veto any short-term debt-ceiling hike. Which has become Obama's most vulnerable point. Is the catastrophe of default preferable to a deal that gives us, say, five months to negotiate something more significant -- because it doesn't get Obama through Election Day?
  
Which is why Obama is already in retreat. On Wednesday, press secretary Jay Carney showed the first crack by saying the president would accept an extension of a few days if needed to complete an already agreed upon long-term deal.
  
Meaning that he would exercise his veto if that larger deal required several months rather than several days? Call his bluff. Let the House pass the Half-Trillion. Dare him to put America into default because he deems a short-term deal insufficiently grand. After all, it dovetails perfectly with parts of the G6, for which the president has expressed support and which explicitly allocates roughly the same amount of time -- six months -- to work out the grander $3-$4 trillion deal. Read more