Tag: Shutdown

Is The Immediate Crisis Over?

Tim Alberta reported last night that the “particulars of this short-term [debt-ceiling] proposal are in flux, as there are ongoing discussions within the conference regarding which provisions — if any — should be attached.” Cohn is waiting to see the House’s bill:

[I]t’s hard to judge Boehner’s proposal without knowing more details. In particluar, will it actually stipulate that fiscal negotiations take place—and, if so, will it put restrictions on what the outcome of those talks can be? These are critical questions. While Obama and the Democrats have signaled that they would reluctantly accept a short-term increase in the debt ceiling—notwithstanding the political perils that my colleague Noam Scheiber recently identified—they have been adamant that legislation increasing the limit not come with strings attached. It’s not clear whether the bill Boehner described would satisfy those criteria.

Jonathan Bernstein’s perspective:

Democrats have no choice but to accept a clean debt-limit extension (or government funding bill, if that’s available) of any length at all … Where it gets fuzzier is if Republicans propose something that isn’t exactly “clean.”

If the add-ons are cosmetic, Democrats probably (again, depending on details) should accept it. If it includes Republican policy gains or Republican-favoring procedural gains, then Democrats should reject it. But if it’s just some meaningless mumbo-jumbo tossed in so that Republicans can claim a victory (or at least pretend there was no defeat), then Democrats should accept it.

Alex Altman is unsure how many Republicans will support the plan:

It is still uncertain whether the restive House Republican conference broadly supports the plan. While members described the meeting as positive and cordial, others said both more moderate and more conservative members expressed reservation. Some centrist Republicans are concerned about leaving the government shuttered. While several of the Tea Party Republicans who forced the shutdown in an effort to change elements of Obamacare said they would support the plan if Obama signed on, others withheld their support.

Chris Cillizza has similar questions:

Can a clean debt limit bill win a majority of the majority?  This is perhaps the most basic question in all of this. Boehner, as we have noted previously in this space, has already passed three pieces of legislation — the fiscal cliff bill, Hurricane Sandy relief funding and the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act — with a minority of Republicans supporting them this year. Does he want to do it again on something as high profile as the debt ceiling?

My favorite quote of the day on all this is from a “senior Democratic aide“:

“Republicans may let one hostage go, but they are keeping a gun to the head of the other, while reserving the right to kidnap the first one again in a few weeks.”

And the beat goes on. Earlier Dish on Boehner’s latest, desperate gambit here.

Norm To The Rescue

An interesting proposal from Ornstein for a way forward:

What Obama needs to offer now is a proposal to make permanent 2011’s onetime “McConnell Rule.” Under that procedure, devised by the minority leader, the president could unilaterally raise the debt limit and Congress could have the option of blocking it by way of a resolution of disapproval. The president, in turn, could veto the resolution of disapproval; a vote of two-thirds of both houses would be required to override the veto.

In return for that action, if the president agreed to remove the tax on medical devices (and replace it with another source of revenue to help fund Obamacare), or agreed to some additional malpractice reform—neither action hitting at any essential core parts of the health care law—it would be a win-win. If, in addition, Boehner simply accepted yes for an answer on reopening the government, attaining the Ryan budget numbers, we could all move past this embarrassing crisis.

I can see Obama seeing that as an option – but not Boehner.

What Does The GOP Have To Show For Itself?

Douthat asks:

From RedState to Heritage to all the various pro-shutdown voices in the House, nobody-but-nobody has sketched out a remotely plausible scenario in which a continued government shutdown leads to any meaningful, worth-the-fighting-for concessions on Obamacare — or to anything, really, save gradually-building pain for the few House Republicans who actually have to fight to win re-election in 2014, and the ratification of the public’s pre-existing sense that the G.O.P. can’t really be trusted with the reins of government.

Sure, the polling could be worse. Sure, assuming cooler heads ultimately prevail, it’s not likely to be an irrecoverable disaster. But something can be less than a disaster and still not make a lick of sense. And that’s what we have here: A case study, for the right’s populists, in how all the good ideas and sound impulses in the world don’t matter if you decide to fight on ground where you simply cannot win.

Friedersdorf largely blames right-wing media for encouraging short-term thinking:

Watch Sean Hannity. Listen to Rush Limbaugh.

With few exceptions, the focus is winning whatever fight happens to be dominating the current news cycle. Each fight is treated as if it is as maximally significant as any other, and that is no coincidence. If you’re driven by partisan tribalism more than ideology, if getting in rhetorical digs at liberals thrills you more than persuading adversaries or achieving policy victories, it makes sense that you would fight substantively inconsequential battles with no more or less vigor than any other.

Galupo imagines what a functional GOP might have achieved:

There is a deal to be had now that Obamacare is again on the backburner and a short-term debt ceiling increase is apparently in play. The mismatch of demands and leverage points is coming back into balance. And so we’re left to wonder what House Republicans could have accomplished had they retained a sense of proportion and sought reasonable concessions without attempting to seize the highest-value hostage. A repeal of the medical device tax, plus sequester-level budget caps? The Keystone pipeline? More?

I have to say that after all this huffing and puffing and threatening to blow our house down, the idea of repealing a medical device tax as the final denouement has a certain element of bathos to it, don’t you think? You nearly destroyed the entire world economy for lower taxes on stethoscopes? Alrighty then …

Kicking Catastrophe Down The Road

Boehner wants to pass a six-week debt ceiling hike but keep the government shut down. Reihan analyzes:

My sense is that the reason for a short-term increase as opposed to a long-term increase is that while a short-term increase has at least some potential of garnering enough Republican votes to pass, a long-term increase does not. And one has to wonder why this is the case. Assume that we pass a short-term debt limit increase and that the Obama administration and Senate Democrats still refuse to offer Obamacare concessions to reopen the government. Do we have any reason to believe that the president and his allies will bear the brunt of the blame? If House Republicans remain united in resisting a clean CR for six weeks, will they be in a more favorable position the next time the federal government approaches the debt limit?

They’re in panic-mode right now, so trying to see any reason behind this is a bit of a mug’s game. My sensewile_e_coyote1 is that even the total loonies have begun to realize that if they blew up the entire US economy and the world’s, it wouldn’t be the first step toward achieving Mark Levin’s utopian new constitution. It might be their last act as a viable political party.

But the underlying issue is not resolved. Sustaining a government shutdown in order to defund Obamacare is not going to work, and must not be allowed to work. Repealing or reforming laws should be done through the regular process, not by shutting down the whole government as blackmail. More to the point, as Reihan also notes, it’s killing the GOP brand:

We’re in this situation in which no matter how unpopular Republicans get, some conservatives will claim that the reason Republicans are unpopular is that they haven’t been sufficiently audacious in making demands. We’re dealing with something akin to a death spiral. Recall that while GOP unfavorables are rising among self-identified Republicans, some number of Republicans will eventually become ex-Republicans — there is some point at which a threshold is crossed. So the 27 percent of Republicans who view their own party unfavorably don’t represent 27 percent of the larger universe of center-right voters. Rather, they represent 27 percent of the residual Republicans left after earlier moments during which other Republicans defected from the party.

My italics. But, leaving the GOP’s implosion to one side, the important thing right now for the country is for the hostage-takers to take the gun away from our collective head. That’s a positive first step. The next step is for them to put the gun down altogether. They haven’t. As for delaying the debt-ceiling Armageddon, Chait notes the remaining weirdness:

The putative reason for delaying the debt limit is to open fiscal negotiations with Democrats. But Republicans have been dodging fiscal negotiations with Democrats for most of the year. Why? Because they don’t want to compromise on the budget.

They want unilateral concessions. Obama won’t give Republicans unilateral concessions. Any deal Boehner strikes with Democrats will have to contain some concessions to Democrats, which will further enrage the tea party. So there’s no deal Boehner can cut on the budget that won’t anger the base, which brings us back to the same stalemate — waiting until the next debt-limit hike, when he needs to prevent catastrophe again.

Kilgore weighs in:

There are a thousand things that could go wrong with Boehner’s gambit, and it obviously doesn’t solve any of the underlying problems created by GOP hostage-taking. But it could at least avoid an immediate financial and economic crisis, with the “winners” including the craziest of conservative Republicans whose appropriations-centered strategy will again be the official GOP position, and the big losers being federal employees looking at at least six more weeks of furloughs.

In this self-induced emergency, lifting the threat of default -even for a few weeks – is something. But I fear that simple non-concession concession has only been granted because the GOP is sinking in the polls like a stone. How much further do they have to sink to start behaving like legitimate actors in government? Another ten point Gallup drop in another week? This is not over.

A Republican-Friendly Deal Republicans Won’t Accept

Yesterday, Paul Ryan suggested a smaller ransom for opening up the government and avoiding default. Cohn rejects the deal:

Ryan in the op-ed doesn’t simply call for negotiations over fiscal policy. He also sketches out what a deal should look like. And it would involve major concessions from Democrats—cuts to Social Security benefits and more means-testing of Medicare, plus tax reform that, presumably, would not raise revenue. In exchange, Republicans would offer some relief from the budget cuts taking place from budget sequestration. But this isn’t much of a concession. Just as Democrats are unhappy about sequestration’s cuts to domestic spending, Republicans are unhappy with sequestration’s cuts to defense spending. It’s hard to see how Republicans could get such a deal in a routine negotiation.

Pareene doubts other Republicans would support Ryan’s plan:

Ryan knows he has to demand concessions that border on unreasonable in order to get conservatives on board with any end to this crisis. The problem, as ever, is that any concessions Republicans can realistically extract from Democrats and the president run the risk of being seen as insufficient specifically because they are achievable, and trolls like Cruz and his enabling organizations will be happy to make that case. Republicans are a few steps away from using a government shutdown to get a Democratic president to cut Social Security and Medicare, and Republicans are the only people standing in their way.

Chait is on the same page:

The single most implausible element of the House leadership’s “let’s negotiate” gambit is the premise that a bipartisan budget deal would satisfy the Republican base. Any bipartisan deal, even one heavily slanted to the Republican side, would enrage conservatives. Even the tiniest concession — easing sequestration, closing a couple of token tax loopholes — would be received on the right as a betrayal. Loss aversion is a strong human emotion, and especially strong among movement conservatives. Concessions given away will dwarf any winnings in their mind. Boehner, Ryan, and Cantor have spent months regaling conservatives with promises of rich ransoms to come. Coming back with an actual negotiated settlement would enrage the right.

What’s The Endgame?

US-POLITICS-ECONOMY

Ambers runs through various possibilities:

The most likely scenario is one where Boehner folds but pretends he didn’t, and Obama negotiates, but only in words. Privately, Boehner would prefer this solution because it would not actually concede any significant ground to the Tea Party, and if the optics are right, he could emerge from this fracas with roughly the same amount of power as before it started. What would this look like? A play, consisting of three acts. Act 1: Republicans promise to pass a clean CR and debt ceiling increase in exchange for specific words from Obama that he can be held to; Act 2: Obama proclaims publicly that he has said all along that he has been willing to negotiate with Republicans, and then says something like, “and I look forward to talking to them right after the the government opens on subjects ranging from tax reform to reducing the burden of entitlements.” Act 3: Boehner seizes on that sentence and tries to sell it to his conference. An unofficial whip count confirms this, but he says publicly that he will do the honorable thing and not allow the nation to go into default SO THAT Republicans can hold Obama accountable on his promise. Finale: the votes pass.

Waldman considers the situation from Boehner’s point of view:

[T]here is not a single factor that over time is making a GOP victory more likely. My guess is that Boehner knows this but is hoping that the fight itself will win him enough breathing space with the conservatives to keep his job when its over. He’ll lose, but he’ll show them that he was willing to inflict some harm on the country in the process, which will deplete their rage just enough.

Think about that for a moment. The only way the Speaker can keep his job is to inflict serious economic damage on the country. That’s the measure of his mettle. We can get lost in the tick-tock of this, and forget to step back and realize that this remains one of the most reckless, nihilist gambits by any political party in my adult lifetime – up there with impeaching Clinton, which, at least, wouldn’t have plunged the entire world into a second depression.

The more extremist they get, the more dangerous they become. If we can survive this self-induced fiasco, we have surely one overwhelming imperative – to get as much constructive things done in the next year and then launch a huge effort to rid the House of these fanatics in 2014. It won’t be easy, but it’s getting urgent.

(Photo: US Speaker of the House John Boehner leaves after speaking at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, October 8, 2013. By Saul Loeb/Getty.)

Will The GOP Take The Gun Away From Our Head?

Byron York passes along a new strategy the GOP is considering:

Many House Republicans, including some key leaders, have decided they can live with a government shutdown but not with the threat of default. In the hours ahead, look for the GOP to seek a deal with President Obama and Democrats on at least a short-term increase in the debt limit, while standing firm on their requirement that a continuing resolution to fund the government must contain some significant measure to limit Obamacare. The bottom line: Republicans have discovered the world did not end when shutdown became a reality — but they’re not willing to risk it with the debt ceiling.

Ponnuru tries to get inside Boehner’s head:

A “clean” CR — a budget bill that reopens the government without any anti-Obamacare conditions — could pass the House with mostly Democratic votes. I think he’s refusing to let it pass not because he’s afraid for his job, but because it would make it much harder for him to raise the debt limit — and he rightly thinks that’s more important.

Stay Classy, Erick

As the GOP begins to realize that destroying the American and the global economy to save millions of people from getting health insurance may not be quite the slam-dunk that Romney’s electoral triumph was going to be, the true believers keep digging in. Erickson wants secession – not from the union (that’s so last Friday), but from the confederacy:

I’m being told by several sources that Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor are plotting to give up trying to either defund or delay Obamacare… John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, and John Cornyn will ensure that Obamacare is fully funded and give the American public no delay like businesses have.

In doing so, they will sow the seeds of a real third party movement that will fully divide the Republican Party.

Oh don’t tease us, Erick.