Steve Benen thinks the Republicans, next year, are more likely than not to shut down the government like they did in 1995.
Likely Senate candidate Joe Miller (R) in Alaska told Fox News last week that GOP lawmakers must have the “courage to shut down the government” in order to eliminate government programs he doesn’t like. Right-wing CNN personality Erick Erickson said with child-like excitement yesterday, “I’m almost giddy thinking about a government shutdown next year. I cannot wait!”
And sleazy GOP consultant Dick Morris told activists late last week that Republicans should do exactly as Gingrich/Dole did 15 years ago, but this time it’ll work out better.
If the Republicans gain control of either house of Congress, it will be very unlikely that they will produce a budget that Obama is willing to sign. I just don’t see how Boehner or McConnell could persuade their freshmen to produce a reasonable budget. But it’s more likely that the Republicans will fall short of winning majorities. Even in that scenario, however, it’s unlikely that the Senate could produce the votes for a reasonable budget.
On the other hand, the Republicans know that they got burned the last time they couldn’t produce a budget that a Democratic president would sign, so they aren’t going to be eager to repeat that mistake.
The problem is, I don’t think the GOP has control of its base and it won’t have control of the freshman class, either. They probably will create another impasse that involves continuing resolutions to keep the government operating. Whether they will back down before or after the government actually shuts up shop is unknowable right now.
One thing that is different is that the 1995 freshman class had actual demands, like the elimination of the Commerce Department, that they were holding out for. This time, there is no single issue that unites the candidates. They don’t like bail-outs. Whoop-de-doo. Government is too big. Yeah…And?
What we’re looking at is basically a train-wreck. The only way to avoid it is to win a net senate seat and maintain control of the House. That’s a tall order, but the stakes are high.
Wouldn’t they be united on defunding the health insurance bill?
No. But they might be united on getting rid of mandates.
Until their puppet masters get ahold of them and told them that if they get rid of the mandates the whole system will collapse. Then they won’t even be united on that front.
The only thing I can see them being united on is opening up investigations into various minor scandals in the Obama administration.
There’s united with other Republicans, and united with disaffected Democrats, albeit not necessarily the ones in congress.
Half the Democrats on the internet would be right there with the Congressional Republicans in supporting a repeal of the mandate.
the mandate’s only fair if there’s a public option.
To be sure. But a repeal of the mandate leads inevitably to a public option – or possibly even a single payer system – as the health insurance industry collapses under the weight of the popular reforms that couldn’t be touched. Get rid of the mandates and it’s the health insurance companies that will be begging for there to a public option so that they can slough off the “undesirables”.
Which is why the Republicans would be reigned back in. There’s no way that their masters in the health insurance industry would allow them to ally with the leftmost liberals in the Congress to repeal the public option – no matter how popular it polled. (Also the fact that they were allying with the leftmost liberals in the Congress would probably already be enough cognitive dissonance to get them to drop the whole thing because the feedback loop from a hated liberal desiring the same thing that they desired would be too much to bear for the types of folks we’re talking about here).
I don’t think so. They are all over the place and no real answers. I am really hoping the American people wake up and see what is going on. The real mid term campaign has not started yet. It will and look out for the ads that are going to come out on both sides. We just have to be more organized and do our ground game.
Better be. At this point the stakes are brutally high.
GOP control of Congress effectively resigns America to paralyzation until 2012 at the earliest, right when we’re going to be in the thick of the worst of the economic mess unwinding.
Another alternative is to make all spending Mandatory. i.e. removed from the annual budget process.
And what should we expect out of the Administration to change the narrative?
MSM is already gung ho to run with the Obama/Dems over reached and have not fixed the economy like promised.
There needs to be some rules put in place that makes it very painful to shut down the government, and the pain has to be directed where it will do the most good.
Like shutting down all interstate highways (in addition to parks) if the federal government shuts down. The GOP will whine like crazy, but it could probably be passed as a budget reconciliation measure.
Yes, painful for “Blue” states, even more for “Red”.
No money? Can’t afford to deport illegals? Have to let them go. Too bad.
Another alternative is to make all spending Mandatory. i.e. removed from the annual budget process.
What I don’t understand is why the Dems don’t introduce a law mandating multi-annual budgeting – say on a five year cycle, whereby a budget is agreed for the next five years and can only be amended/extended for another year by next years budget. Then, if the teabaggers refuse to pass a budget a President can sign, its business as usual for the next five years. If they produce crazy amendments, the President (if he is a dem) can still veto it. That way only if the GOP controls both Congress and the Presidency can they close down the Government – and bear full responsibility and reap the consequences.
It shouldn’t be possible for congress to shut down the Executive branch – the Constitution mandates a balance between the branches. By all means refuse to granted increases, or threaten a shut down in 5 years time, or shut it down when a Republican President also bears responsibility. But ongoing Governance as a steady state activity should be untouchable without control of all branches of Government. Only changes should be “political”.
Anyone proposing a 5-year plan would immediately be labeled an old-fashioned Communist, and with a degree of merit…
Biennial budgeting is all you’d ever see. Beyond that, you’re into another Congress altogether, and there’s a taboo on one legislature binding the hands of another.
“‘Acts of Parliament derogatory from the power of subsequent parliaments bind not. . . Because the legislature, being in truth the sovereign power, is always of equal, always of absolute authority: it acknowledges no superior upon earth, which the prior legislature must have been, if its ordinances could bind the present parliament.'”
Nothing to stop a subsequent congress from amending a five year budget – if they can over-ride any Presidential veto – or if a sympathetic President has been elected by then…
There’s a constitutional limit in military appropriations (2 years), Artile I, section 8:
“To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;”
Now, that doesn’t limit OTHER budget items, but the military budget is such a huge fraction of the total that it’s hard to motivate multi-year budgeting for them.
Better to “sunset” a bunch of things the GOP wants (ag subsidies? oil depletion allowances?) so that they’ll have to pass a budget to keep them going.
They have so many vacations now – what will the difference?