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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21 , 2012

washingtonpost.com • $1

Boehner drops
effort to avoid
the ‘fiscal cliff’

At the Capitol, a farewell for Inouye

REPUBLICANS REMAIN OPPOSED TO ‘PLAN B’

Doubt is cast on ability to pass alternative
L ORI M ONTGOMERY AND
R OSALIND S . H ELDERMAN

BY

NIKKI KAHN/THE WASHINGTON POST

Sen. Daniel K. Inouye lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda. As the casket arrived, senators and aides stood five deep to
honor Inouye, a Democrat who served Hawaii in Congress for more than 50 years before his death Monday at age 88.
Inouye, only the 31st person to lie in state in the Rotunda, “deserved to spend at least another day in this beautiful building
to which he dedicated his life,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid. 6 Photos and video at postpolitics.com.

Vietnam scars still show in Hagel’s policies
Former Nebraska senator with a Purple Heart could be nominated as defense secretary
BY

C RAIG W HITLOCK

Shards from a Viet Cong mine
are still embedded in Chuck Hagel’s chest, 44 years after his infantry squad walked into a booby
trap in the Vietnam jungle. Scar
tissue marks the left side of his
face from another mine explosion, barely a month after his first
brush with death.
“I remember,” Hagel told an
interviewer for the Library of
Congress’s Veterans History Project in 2002, “thinking to myself,
you know, if I ever get out of all of
this, I am going to do everything I
can to assure that war is the last
resort that we, a nation, a people,

calls upon to settle a disHagel
served
24
pute. The horror of it, the
months in the Army as an
pain of it, the suffering of
enlisted grunt before emit. People just don’t unbarking on successful caderstand it unless they’ve
reers in business and polibeen through it.”
tics that saw him earn milToday, Hagel, 66,
lions and win election to
heads President Obama’s
the Senate, twice, as a Reshortlist of candidates to
Chuck Hagel
publican from Nebraska.
lead the Pentagon. If he is
Although his views on
nominated by the White House
whether the Vietnam War was jusand confirmed by the Senate, he
tified have changed over time, Hawould become the first defense
gel’s combat experiences have consecretary with a Purple Heart, the
sistently driven his approach to
combat decoration for those
foreign policy, his political passion.
wounded in battle, since Elliot L.
As a senator, he voted to authoRichardson, who held the job
rize the war in Iraq but soon
briefly during the Nixon adminisbecame the most vocal and cuttration.
ting Republican critic of the

George W. Bush administration,
accusing it of bungling the occupation. In 2007, he warned that
Bush’s plan to send 30,000 more
troops to Iraq would be “the most
dangerous foreign policy blunder
in this country since Vietnam, if
it’s carried out.”
His unbridled assessments left
other Republicans wondering
whose side he was on and thoroughly alienated the GOP’s neoconservative wing, which still

BY

M ICHAEL B IRNBAUM

tuttlingen, germany — More
than three years into an economic crisis that has threatened to
tear Europe apart, one country is
still on a hiring spree, and it is
pulling away the best and the
brightest workers from its neighbors along the way.
Thousands of professionals
from recession-struck Spain and
Greece have been streaming into
Germany, where joblessness remains low, and some say they
may never leave. The migration is
the biggest test yet for the European Union’s promise to wipe
away economic barriers between
nations, as the best-trained
workers from weak countries
leave home in the greatest numbers since the bloc was forged.

IN THE NEWS
Griffin gets green light The Redskins
quarterback appears to be fit to play Sunday
against the Eagles, barring a setback. D7
Sandy Hook investigation Police said it will
take months to determine why Adam Lanza
killed 27 people, including his mother, whose
funeral was held in New Hampshire. A3

The Federal Diary

More controversy
Chuck Hagel is also being criticized
by gay rights groups. A25

Ruth Marcus: Just when Boehner’s
negotiations were bearing fruit, he
had to go and spoil things. A29

YURI GRIPAS/REUTERS

House Speaker John A. Boehner
speaks about the “fiscal cliff.”

How the gamble
on his own party
failed to pay off
BY P AUL K ANE, E D O ’ K EEFE
AND L ORI M ONTGOMERY

John A. Boehner’s week on the
brink ended in a painfully familiar place.
It began last week when President Obama delivered a stern
message to the House speaker: If
there was going to be a deal to
tame the nation’s debt, it had to
happen now. If they went over
the “fiscal cliff,” it would only
become harder to reach a deal,
Obama said.
The next day, Friday, Boehner
(R-Ohio) phoned Obama offering
what seemed like a major breakthrough: Republicans would
agree to raise tax rates for the
first time in decades if the president gave a key concession on
entitlement reform.
That offer set in motion seven
days of dealmaking, posturing
and cajoling by Boehner and
other House leaders, first on a
grand deal with the White House
and then on a Plan B with their
own House caucus. By Thursday
night, both deals had fallen
apart.
boehner continued on A4

In hot D.C. housing market,
bidders blow past asking prices

Now, the new right to work
anywhere is bumping against old
prejudices about crossing national lines. There are new
strains in the partnership, with
some Germans fretting about the
influx and Spanish and Greek
policymakers worried that their
best hope for recovery is vanishing one plane ticket at a time.
The movement into Germany
— a flow that has become so
intense that the country has
halted a decade of population
decline — is just the latest development in a process that has seen
Europe’s
richer
countries
strengthen even as the poorer
ones become increasingly hollowed out. While Spain, Greece
and Portugal struggle to create
germany continued on A16

cliff continued on A4
Playing it safe, the administration
warns that furloughs are possible. B4

hagel continued on A25

E.U. relations under stress
as workers flee to Germany

House Speaker John A. Boehner threw efforts to avoid the
year-end “fiscal cliff ” into chaos
late Thursday, as he abruptly
shuttered the House for the holidays after failing to win support
from his fellow Republicans for a
plan to let tax rates rise for
millionaires.
The proposal — Boehner’s alternative to negotiating a broader package with President
Obama — would have protected
the vast majority of Americans
from significant tax increases set
to take effect next year. But
because it also would have permitted tax rates to rise for about
400,000 families, conservatives
balked, leaving Boehner (Ohio)
humiliated and his negotiating
power immeasurably weakened.
No one could say late Thursday what will happen next. Just
11 days remain until the new
year, when more than $500 billion in automatic tax increases
and spending cuts will begin to
take effect, threatening to undermine the sluggish recovery and
prompt a new recession.
As a grim-faced Boehner hurried from the Capitol on Thursday evening, his office issued a
statement abdicating responsibility for solving the crisis to
Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate.
“The House did not take up
the tax measure today because it
did not have sufficient support

BY

SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST

This townhouse on Fourth Street NE beat
the list price by more than $400,000.

THE REGION

THE WORLD

D.C. public schools
outsourced their lunch
program to save money
but lost $10 million a
year from 2008 to ’12. B1
UDC President Allen
L. Sessoms was dis­
missed without cause
and is eligible under his
contract to get a year’s
salary of $295,000, his
attorney said. B1

In a debate over allow­
ing female bishops,
some say the Church of
England must enforce
tradition in fast­chang­
ing times. A6
Clashes have subsided
at a Palestinian refugee
camp in Damascus. A10
THE ECONOMY

Research in Motion

A NNYS S HIN

It didn’t look like a house anyone would
pay $400,000 extra for.
Several walls inside the gray townhouse
with blue trim were streaked with water
stains. The first floor was noticeably uneven.
And termites had dined in front.
The big pluses: It was 2,850 square feet,
had off-street parking, and was in walking
distance of Union Station and the bars and
restaurants along H Street NE. Then there
was the list price: $337,000. Similar houses
in the neighborhood were going for closer to
$500,000.
Two weeks and 168 bids later, the house —
in the 800 block of Fourth Street NE — was
sold this month for $760,951 to an unidentified buyer.
The sale floored many real estate agents,
including James Lisowski, whose clients put
in a losing bid. “I don’t think it was worth

had a better quarter on
the stock market than
Apple did, but can the
BlackBerry maker con­
tinue its comeback? A18
The New York Stock
Exchange sold itself to
Intercontinental Ex­
change for $8.2 billion,
a sign of how changing
times are forcing stock
exchanges to find new
partners in search of

bigger profits. A18

that finished,” he said, alluding to the
house’s distressed condition.
While much of the nation is still struggling to emerge from a historic housingmarket meltdown, the District is reliving its
boom days. High rents, low interest rates,
low inventory, and a flood of new residents
in their 20s and 30s are making parts of the
city feel like it’s 2005 again.
The median home sale price in the District is up 14 percent from last year, according to RealEstate Business Intelligence
(RBI). And the average number of days
houses spend on the market has fallen by
nearly 30 percent, to 53 days.
Bidding wars have become commonplace
along H Street NE, in Trinidad and in
Eckington, among other areas. So have
multiple cash offers and sales that soar past
the asking price. In certain neighborhoods,
bids continued on A21

from 2008 to 2010, an
audit shows. A26

THE NATION

After six years of de­
cline, traffic fatalities in
the U.S. jumped by
7 percent in first nine
months of 2012. A5
Virginia has not used
more than $38 million
of the $90 million in
federal homeland secu­
rity grants it was given

Printed using recycled fiber

SPORTS

Caps players are get­
ting antsy as games
through Jan. 14 are can­
celed. D1
In his second season
in College Park, Mark
Turgeon takes a beige
path to success amid a
neon world of hoops. D1

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CONTENT © 2012
The Washington Post / Year 136, No. 16