Mr. Boehner, Clean Up This Barn

WASHINGTON -- "I don't want to leave my successor a dirty barn," John Boehner, the soon-to-depart Speaker of the House, told CBS News' John Dickerson. "I want to clean the barn up a little bit before the next person gets there."

Heaven knows, there's lots of shoveling to do. Boehner's resignation, and the month until it takes effect, offers the prospect -- albeit a slim one -- for a mini-grand bargain to let the government function more effectively until after the presidential election. Boehner would do his successor, his party and the country a huge favor if he were to do the necessary mucking.

The bargain that's in the realm of the possible is far from the sort of broad agreement on spending and entitlements that Boehner and President Obama envisioned in 2012. That deal entailed politically risky moves by both sides -- for Democrats, raising the Medicare eligibility age and reducing cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients, along with huge spending cuts; for Republicans, acceding to $800 billion in new taxes.

That moment is gone. Some of the tax revenue was achieved in the 2013 fiscal cliff deal; some of the cuts were imposed through the clumsy mechanism of the sequester, which now requires undoing.

Meanwhile, there's no time, or energy, for something as complex as tax reform. Once Boehner could have overseen an overhaul of immigration laws had he been willing to rely on Democratic votes; now, that would be irrelevant because support for immigration reform has evaporated among Senate Republicans who once approved it.

And so, my proposed mini-bargain does not resolve long-term concerns. Instead, it would put a Band-Aid -- or, more likely, a series of Band-Aids -- on shorter-term problems: setting spending levels to prevent a repetition of shut-down politics until after the election; avoiding the threat of default as the debt ceiling once again looms; replenishing the depleted and about-to-expire Highway Trust Fund; reauthorizing the lapsed Export-Import Bank; extending expiring tax breaks.

In other words, accomplishing what ought to be congressional business-as-usual, but what has become, in the current toxic atmosphere, a series of heavy, if not impossible, lifts.

The easiest path would be for Boehner simply to avert the worst of the worst and pass a short-term spending bill to avoid having the government shut down over federal funding for Planned Parenthood. That still leaves an awfully messy barn.

Boehner's urge to do more is not only commendable -- it's achievable, in part if not entirely. After all, there is another chamber to contend with, one that requires 60 votes to act. That complicates even a simple vote to raise the debt ceiling; more elaborate endeavors, such as a funding bill that lasts beyond the current target date of Dec. 11, might not be achievable within the time remaining.

But if Boehner wants to leave on a note of statesmanship, he has to be willing, in a way he has not been previously, to rile up the ultra-conservatives whose resistance to reason and basic arithmetic propelled him to leave.

Boehner has, on occasion, deviated from the so-called Hastert rule and relied on votes from the minority to pass legislation, including the fiscal cliff deal, Superstorm Sandy relief, the Violence Against Women Act, and the debt-ceiling increase. But I am told that Boehner, while eager to broker a deal, is reluctant to act without the backing of a significant share of his caucus. He would bring a mini-grand bargain to the floor (as a whole or in individual pieces) with a minority of the majority, but not so small that it could threaten the incipient speakership of his likely successor, California Republican Kevin McCarthy.

The way for Boehner to assemble more Republican support would be to argue that conservatives were getting something in exchange -- for example, a change in the method of calculating cost-of-living increases known as chained CPI. But Obama may have neither the inclination nor the juice to convince congressional Democrats to accept that controversial change.

On inclination, the administration and congressional Democrats calculate, correctly, that Republicans are the ones with more to lose in fights over the debt ceiling and a government shutdown. On juice, Democrats in Congress have already acceded to Obama on the Iran deal and trade promotion authority. It's not likely they would follow Obama off the chained CPI cliff.

In other words: Pray for a bargain. But keep the shovel handy.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.