Pass a federal budget — show we are a functional democracy

The recent terrorist attacks have called forth predictable demands from our nation’s politicians, particularly President Obama’s opponents, for American leadership in the world.

The often chaotic budget and debt-ceiling battles between the president and congressional Republicans (along with a great deal of demagoguery around issues related to immigration, race and Islam) have inspired little confidence among either friends or foes that we can manage even our own affairs.

The coming mid-December deadline for reaching a budget agreement should thus be seen as more than just another inning in a long fiscal game.

Merely writing such a sentence produces instant shivers of doubt, but this time, political calculation may be on the side of good government.

The way for a sensible outcome was opened by former House Speaker John Boehner’s final good deed when he championed an agreement last month (passed largely with Democratic votes) on overall government spending levels and a two-year debt-ceiling increase.

Many of the most vulnerable Republican seats are in bluish states (among them Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire), and budget shenanigans would go down very badly in these places, as would attacks on environmental rules and regulatory bows to Wall Streets.

A stately march to a budget agreement would let Ryan add to his largely positive collection of media reviews.

Negotiators are working on what would be a genuinely bipartisan compromise to make a series of provisions in Obama’s original stimulus program permanent.

In exchange for locking in these credits, Democrats would agree to make permanent the research and development tax credit and other business tax breaks that Congress typically extends anyway.