Tag: Shutdown

The Speaker’s Choice Narrows

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Yesterday, Beutler predicted that Republican dead-enders in the House would oppose the Senate deal. They did. This morning, NRO’s Robert Costa predicted that “because the way the House GOP is running now, and given the internal politics, even THIS bill will have its challenges, let alone a Sen deal.” And he was right.

This morning, the GOP leadership could not get enough support from their own caucus for the alternative, tougher “compromise” they wanted. So we’re back to the Senate bill, which the House may have to reject and throw us into economic chaos or accept and step back from the brink. Beutler explains how the bill can still pass the House:

[A]s weak as his control of the House is, Boehner’s still officially the speaker — and as long as he’s officially the speaker, he controls the floor. The logical leap (really, the assumption) everyone’s making is that Boehner will put the Senate plan on the floor before midnight, rather than kowtow to the dead-enders to preserve his speakership. There are almost certainly 217-plus votes in the House for any deal that comes out of the Senate, which means we’ll only crash through the debt limit deadline if Boehner chooses to let the country default the same way he chose to shut down the government.

Ezra sees the logic of the Senate deal:

The timing of all this is designed to create a fight about sequestration.

The Jan. 15 deadline means funding for the federal government runs out at the exact moment sequestration’s deeper cuts kick in. The Dec. 13 deadline means that the full House and Senate would have time to consider any package of recommendations the bicameral committee comes up with, if the committee actually manages to come up with anything.

The deal isn’t official yet. It hasn’t passed the Senate yet. And it certainly hasn’t passed the House yet. But if it does clear those hurdles — and, again, that’s a big if — it’ll mean Republicans and Democrats have agreed to take what began as a fight over the Affordable Care Act and make it into a fight over sequestration.

If the Senate bill passes, Drum wonders whether we will get a “rerun of the whole mess next year”:

The evidence this time around has been pretty resounding that the public isn’t on the GOP’s side in this fight, and that might convince lot of Republican fence-sitters to nip things in the bud if the tea partiers try to start another hopeless war in February. Right now, public irritation with the budget fight probably hasn’t had any real effect on next year’s midterm elections, but if Republicans do it again and again, it might.

Which depends on the fallout within the GOP. Can they begin to rein in their nutters? Or are they all too afraid of them?

(Photo: Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, speaks after a House Republican meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, October 15, 2013. By Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.)

A One-Man Default

Tomasky warns that Ted Cruz could cause one:

Screen Shot 2013-10-15 at 12.00.10 PM[W]ill Ted Cruz and/or Mike Lee let the deal move through the Senate quickly enough to avert default? The Senate will have to expedite its usual clock to do that, and that requires … dum da-dum … unanimous consent. Cruz was asked about yesterday and said, “We need to see what the details are.” Great. There’s our Senate. One man can totter the world economy.

Josh Green calculated that, even if a bill had been introduced last night, Cruz could delay it until Friday, a day after we hit the debt ceiling. One wonders what kind of demented ego lies behind this reckless, phony demagogue.

(Image from Twitter user darthredpandacare)

The Sabotage Is Already Happening

Felix Salmon provides a reality check:

The global faith in US institutions has already been undermined. The mechanism by which catastrophe would arise has already been set into motion. And as a result, economic growth in both the US and the rest of the world will be lower than it should be. Unemployment will be higher. Social unrest will be more destructive. These things aren’t as bad now as they would be if we actually got to a point of payment default. …

While debt default is undoubtedly the worst of all possible worlds, then, the bonkers level of Washington dysfunction on display right now is nearly as bad. Every day that goes past is a day where trust and faith in the US government is evaporating — and once it has evaporated, it will never return. The Republicans in the House have already managed to inflict significant, lasting damage to the US and the global economy — even if they were to pass a completely clean bill tomorrow morning, which they won’t. The default has already started, and is already causing real harm. The only question is how much worse it’s going to get.

What is being undermined is America’s central place in the global economy. To dislodge the US from that because the GOP lost the last election is so out of proportion with any conceivable gains even hostage-takers and blackmailers could get it is almost the definition of insanity. I once wrote an essay on the degeneracy of American conservatism – about 15 years ago! – which I called “Going Down Screaming.” But what this rogue faction of fanatics is doing is bringing us all down screaming. They are not negotiating. They are sabotaging their own country.

Except, it’s clear to me at least that this is not how they see it.

They are sabotaging what they regard as someone else’s country – the country that voted for Obama twice, that gave the popular vote majority in the House to Democrats, that gave the Senate to the Democrats, that has a majority for marriage equality, that desperately needs immigration reform, and that, in any long-term fiscal Grand Bargain, must have more revenues for any deal to work.

That’s why I come back to the analogy of a cold civil war. The reluctance of the South to pay the debts of the nation which led to the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of the national debt. It seems to me that if the House GOP really does intend to destroy the American and global economy, to throw millions out of work, to make our debt problem far worse in a new depression … just to make a point about Obamacare, then at some point, Obama, like Lincoln, must preserve the republic.

But no president should ever want to take that position – because it represents the collapse of the American polity. But we are in collapse. If the House pushes the country into default this week, there is no workable American polity left. The most basic forms of collective responsibility will have been forsaken for almost pathological ideological purism and cultural revolt.

The House Goes Rogue

Earlier this morning, Ezra wondered whether the House would accept the Senate’s bill:

The question now is whether the House can pass the Senate’s deal — and, if they can’t, how quickly the resulting game of legislative ping-pong can be played. It may not seem possible for Republicans to push their disapproval higher than 74 percent. But if House Republicans cause an 800 point drop in the stock market by rejecting a deal Senate Republicans have signed off on and breaching the debt ceiling they may come to look back on 74 percent fondly.

Robert Costa’s reporting doesn’t inspire confidence in the House GOP:

House conservatives are bashing [the Senate deal] behind the scenes, and they’re pushing leadership to reject the compromise. A flurry of phone calls and meetings last night and early this morning led to that consensus among the approximately 50 Republicans who form the House GOP’s right flank. They’re furious with Senate Republicans for working with Democrats to craft what one leading tea-party congressman calls a “mushy piece of s**t.” Another House conservative warns, “If Boehner backs this, as is, he’s in trouble.”

But that’s unlikely to happen. As of 8:30 a.m., House conservatives believe the leadership is well aware of their unhappiness, and they expect Boehner to talk up the House’s next move: another volley to the Senate, which would extend the debt ceiling, reopen the government, and set up a budget conference, plus request conservative demands that go beyond the Senate’s outline.

This brinksmanship with millions of jobs and lives at stake the world over is staggering. The narcissism is staggering. The sheer, rank irresponsibility is staggering. This is not conservatism by any meaning of the word. It is nihilist vandalism.

The GOP Must Know It Lost

Isaac Chotiner explains:

If Republicans get a win on the medical device tax but are generally considered to have been routed by the president, future hostage-taking becomes less likely. If the GOP is despondent and depressed, and the media coverage plays up their falling poll numbers, this disaster is unlikely to repeat itself. But if concessions are seen as a GOP win, then expect more hostage scenarios. Remember, Clinton went along with spending cuts as a way of ending the government shutdown in 1995. But the perception was that he had won a major victory over Republicans, and, consequently, we did not witness five more years of shutdowns. Of course a debt ceiling crisis is much more serious than a shutdown (we can be proud to currently face both). But the principle still holds. The medical device tax and cuts to entitlement programs are important on the merits. But in this case, and going forward, perception trumps reality.

Given the absurd expectations created by fanatics like Cruz and Lee, I cannot imagine how the Tea Party will envisage any deal that doesn’t replace the entire Democratic agenda with their own as capitulation. Drudge, I note, has dropped the negotiations as a leading topic in favor of a story of a food stamp stampede after a technical glitch in a couple of towns in Louisiana. Maybe the propaganda machine is adjusting expectations a little … Costa notes:

GOP enthusiasm for the showdown, from both conservatives and grandees, is waning. Members are spending considerable time calling one another to lament, and they’re worried about fading public support. “We can’t get lower in the polls. We’re down to blood relatives and paid staffers now,” said Senator John McCain on CBS’s Face the Nation. “But we’ve got to turn this around, and the Democrats had better help.”

Email Of The Day

A reader writes:

I have been a registered Republican for almost 20 years now and I have endured some horrendous candidates within my party because I truly believed Republicans were capable of rational discourse and realistic methods to reining in what I believe is an out-of-control government. I have endured Bush in 2004 with his disgusting gay baiting, Palin in 2008 and Tea Party of 2010/2012. I have taken serious abuse from friends who cannot fathom why in the hell I would belong to such a party.

I grew up during the Reagan years, where the promise of America was real for everyone. I believed in my country and its leaders. I “thought” Republicans stood FOR something … but the sad reality is that they only are AGAINST everything that does not square with their delusional idea of what America used to be … and actually never was.

I think it was Ted Cruz who led me to my breaking point with his phony filibuster and his propaganda machine to exacerbate the already gripping paranoia in the Republican party. Make no mistake, I think Obamacare is a disaster and the Democrats barely capable of doing anything to get our country on the right path. But I’d rather work to fix the mess than to support a party totally incapable of governing in a fact-based manner.

I am ashamed it took me this long to change. But I just filled out my voter registration document to change party affiliation. I will not associate myself with this destructive party any longer. And I bet I am not alone.

Invoking The 14th

Hertzberg hopes Obama will go there:

In the end, Obama could have no honorable choice but to invoke the Fourteenth. There is little doubt that he would prevail. The Supreme Court would be unlikely even to consider the matter, since no one would have standing to bring a successful suit: when the government pays its bills, who is damaged? The House Republicans might draw up articles of impeachment, adopt them, and send them to the Senate, where the probability of a conviction would be zero. This would not be a replay of Bill Clinton and the intern. President Clinton was not remotely guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, but he was guilty of something, and that something was sordid. Yet impeachment was what put Clinton on a glide path to his present pinnacle as a wildly popular statesman. President Obama would be guilty only of saving the nation’s economy, and the world’s.

Emily Bazelon and Eric Posner argue along the same lines:

[L]awsuits that challenge the president’s authority to issue debt would almost certainly go nowhere. Most plaintiffs would not be able to show a personal injury from the issuing of new debt. Lacking legal standing, their cases would be dismissed. Those who got beyond this stage would be blocked by the political question doctrine: Courts would dismiss the suit on the grounds that the controversy over the debt is an inter-branch conflict between the president and Congress that is not for judges to resolve. So if some creditors sell off Treasuries or refuse to buy new debt, the smartest investors—the hedge funds and the sovereign wealth funds—would sweep in to make a killing. …

If Obama jumps the gun and lifts the debt ceiling before the public has a sense of crisis, he risks being accused of imperialism (and of being impeached). But in the end, he has plausible arguments that he has the power to save us from default. He should use that power. The country, the markets, and future presidents will thank him.

Not In The Clear Yet

Yesterday, Stan Collender claimed that it “still no better than 50-50 … that the debt ceiling will be raised by October 17”:

One of the biggest problem[s] with the current shutdown/debt ceiling situation is that no one has any assurance that the person they’re negotiating with has any authority to agree to anything. The president can’t be sure congressional Democrats will go along with what he might agree to with Republicans, Boehner absolutely knows there is no guarantee that House and Senate Republicans will follow his lead and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) won’t be followed blindly by Senate Republicans. In other words, even if there were a deal it is not clear who could agree to it.

This, and the likelihood of simple miscalculation of time, could render any agreement moot, and tip the markets into a tailspin, along with our recovery. I just hope that sense of urgency exists in these negotiating rooms. The point is not that we should get out of this fiasco by the skin of our teeth – but that a functioning country never gets even close to this kind of potential meltdown. Every day that passes erodes the credibility of the US economy and government, and thereby its currency. And at some point, the erosion becomes a mudslide.

What’s Wrong With The Collins Deal?

McConnell is in favor of it:

McConnell embraced a plan by Senator Susan Collins — the Republican from Maine — on Sunday, which would raise the debt limit through January and fund the government through the end of March, while delaying for two years Obamacare’s medical-device tax and require income verification in order to qualify for Obamacare subsidies.

I truly want to get a deal but this one would be, to my mind, merely a delay in the crisis, even an extension of it. If the GOP were to take the debt ceiling off the table, or come up with a way to do it indefinitely, we’d be talking. When hostage-takers release the hostage, they don’t usually get to keep their weapons. But if that is not an option, then, as an interim step, why not raise the debt limit through January 2015 and let the midterms decide the fiscal future?

And if the GOP needs a face-saver, I suppose K-Street’s medical device tax is as meaningless a concession as any. It’s not integral to the ACA. And you can see why the president might have negotiated such a thing outside of any self-induced debt crisis. As for sequestration, I have no problems with keeping spending at those levels until March, along Collins lines, and I think the Democrats should be very wary of over-playing their hand. We are in an emergency here – and haggling over spending levels for the next six months does not seem to me to be a good enough reason to hold up a potential deal.

Ezra explains why Democrats have rejected it nonetheless:

Two main arguments were made against the Collins deal. First, it locks in sequestration levels of spending for six months. Key Senate Democrats see that as a much larger, and more dangerous, concession than the old CR, which only agrees to it for six weeks. Second, the deal’s delay of the medical device tax meant it was, in fact, a concession in order to reopen the government — and Democrats think it’s important to persuade the GOP that they can’t win anything through this kind of hostage taking.

I don’t think that’s a big win. I think it’s a minimal concession for them to save face in what is already a political disaster for them. Jonathan Cohn adds:

Reid and McConnell are still talking. Those talks will probably be the basis of whatever agreement ends this crisis. But Democrats have established a pretty simple test for new proposals: Is it a deal Democrats would make in normal circumstances, without a shutdown and without the threat of default? So far, nothing Republicans have suggested comes close to meeting that criteria.

I think adjusting a medical devices tax in return for a sequester-level CR and a lifting of the debt ceiling till after the mid-terms would be easily a deal Dems would accept under normal circumstances. The key issue, in my view, is the debt ceiling threat. That’s the fiscal weapon of mass destruction we have to abolish or defuse indefinitely.

Yes, For Them, This Is A Game

A cruel, vain, exploitative, nihilist, irrelevant, made-for-TV game:

Conor Friedersdorf sighs:

What I think, when I see that memorial closures are the thing that gets conservatives in the streets, is that movement leaders and rank-and-file activists alike cannot be counted on to identify and take on the most serious issues facing veterans, or the most serious threats to liberty. Instead they spend their time seizing on symbolic issues that promise to result in the best optics for a given news cycle — World War II veterans traveled to Washington and can’t visit the memorial dedicated to them!

Think what victory would mean in this instance: the barricades would come down, which will happen anyway as soon as the government reopens. In other words, there’s no substantive upside for this particular rally, whether you’re concerned about benefiting veterans or safeguarding liberty. It was held so that Cruz and Palin could aggrandize themselves, so that conservatives could revel in their self-image as liberty loving patriots who honor veterans, and so that the Obama Administration would look bad. Protests are nothing more than political theater for these people. Or if they actually intend to effect change, their strategy verges on nonsensical.

Earlier Dish on the rally here.