William Moorhead Quotes

Boehner’s Republicans controlled the House of Representatives. However the Democrats controlled the Senate and Obama, the president, was a Democrat. So while Boehner could block any legislation, he could not pass legislation that the Republicans wanted. So the speaker resorted to the tactic of holding for ransom import legislation unless the President and the Democrats would pass legislation that the majority of the public and the Democrats were against. In this case it was the debt ceiling limit. The United States spends money authorized by Congress and then has to pay the bills. When the country is growing, the government has to borrow money in order to meet its obligations and pay bills. Congress must authorize the increase in the debt limit. Boehner held the debt limit hostage until Obama would agree to spending cuts that were unpopular with the majority. A problem for the Republicans with this strategy however was that the government would not have enough money to pay the regular bills and the government would have to slow down. This was considered a most unpatriotic thing to do and one would put the United States full faith and credit at risk. Republicans justified it on the grounds that spending money as the government was doing was worse and therefore it requires extreme measures. This was not the only occasion where a political party put its ideology ahead of the welfare if the nation as a whole. But in those few past occasions the party doing this was not overt about it, and could never be accused of blackmailing. What made this quotation remarkable was that it was the first time that the politician was very explicit about the blackmail strategy. President Obama actually caved in a bit and compromised and reduced spending so the debt ceiling was raised. Earlier, President Clinton had the same tactic tried on him but he let the Government shut down, and after a few days, The political heat on the Republicans were so great that they had to raise the debt ceiling and reopen the government.

Many critics of the neoconservatives like Perle observed that if we were negotiating with friends and allies and they made demands or exacted a high price for what we wanted, this was viewed as diplomacy and give and take was appropriate. But when states which were not friends and whose government we did not approve of, made demands or exacted a high price for what we wanted, this was viewed as “blackmail” and should never be acceded to. Negotiations with those states those became extremely difficult if neoconservatives were controlling or influencing the negotiating tactics and strategy.

In the early 1970's Congress began to assert itself in foreign policy. An amendment was proposed by Mike Mansfield to halve the troops committed to NATO:

Alluding to French willingness to pay ransom for hostages:

Asked if he would relent in his attitude toward Iraqi President Saddam Hussein if the Iraqi leader would free American hostages and make concessions: