As you probably know by now, Harry Reid was forced to pull the Appropriations Omnibus bill off the Senate calendar in the face of ridiculous obstruction, absurd antics, and stunning hypocrisy. The government has been operating on a continuing resolution since October with funds and priorities frozen at 2010 levels. If nothing changes, this will be the first year ever that Congress couldn’t pass a single appropriations bill (not even the Defense bill). But that doesn’t mean that the Republicans didn’t engage in the appropriations process. There are thirteen appropriations subcommittees in the House and twelve in the Senate, and Republicans sit on all of them and participate in the process of directing federal dollars to specific projects, departments, and priorities. They hold hearings, they work with the White House, and they usually work in a fairly bipartisan manner. All of that work is wasted.
But it gets better. In mid-July, Minority Leader McConnell laid down an ultimatum. He sent Senate Appropriations Chairman Inouye (D-HI) a letter saying that the Republicans would not support any discretionary spending above the level proposed by Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO). Their cap, which included both military and non-military discretionary spending, came to about $1.1 trillion. By no coincidence, that is the same amount contained in the Omnibus Appropriations bill. Despite this, McConnell is now expressing surprise and disgust at the size of the bill. As Tanya Somanader points out at Think Progress, the hypocrisy was more than Majority Whip Dick Durbin could take.
DURBIN: I’m a member of the Appropriations Committee. And I remember what happened…this is the reality…It’s true it’s over a trillion dollars. In fact, it’s $1.1 trillion in this bill. But what hasn’t been said by Senator McConnell and Senator Kyl, that’s exactly the amount that they asked for! Senator McConnell came to the Senate Appropriations Committee and said Republicans will not support this bill unless you bring the spending down to $1.108 trillion. That is exactly what we bring down to the floor to be considered.
So to stand back in horror and look at $1.1. trillion and say where did this figure come from, it came from Senator Mitch McConnell in a motion he made before the Senate Appropriations Committee. It reflects the amount that he said was the maximum we should spend in this current calendar year on our appropriation bills. He prevailed. It’s the same number as the so-called Sessions-McCaskill figure that’s been debated back and forth on this floor, voted repeatedly by Republicans to be the appropriate total number. So we have the bipartisan agreement on the total number, and now the Republican leader comes to the floor, stands in horror at the idea of $1.1 trillion, the very same number he asked for in this bill. You can’t have it both ways.
But the problem is precisely that McConnell can have it both ways. I was most amused to see Jon Chait positing an opinion that just maybe Mitch McConnell has been bullying moderates into giving him every procedural vote for the last two years. This isn’t some hypothesis. He announced his Party of No Strategy in the New York Times.
Before the health care fight, before the economic stimulus package, before President Obama even took office, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, had a strategy for his party: use his extensive knowledge of Senate procedure to slow things down, take advantage of the difficulties Democrats would have in governing and deny Democrats any Republican support on big legislation…
“It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out,” Mr. McConnell said about the health legislation in an interview, suggesting that even minimal Republican support could sway the public. “It’s either bipartisan or it isn’t.”
Mr. McConnell said the unity was essential in dealing with Democrats on “things like the budget, national security and then ultimately, obviously, health care.”
We should remember this every time the Republicans complain about a lack of bipartisanship or that the Democrats are trying to shove everything through during the Holiday season.
McConnell doesn’t just ‘get away’ with ‘having it both ways,’ he’s been rewarded with a six seat gain in the Senate and a Republican-controlled House to negotiate with. But he is talking out of both sides of his mouth. Even the Las Vegas Sun has noticed:
Meanwhile, the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, called the spending bill a “slap in the face” of voters, decrying the earmarks in it. Never mind that McConnell set aside $109 million worth of projects for his state in the legislation.
Of course, McConnell isn’t alone. And he’s the reason that no appropriations bills passed and they had to be combined into an Omnibus bill. He’s the reason that the Senate is struggling to pass many things right at the end of the year when most politicians would rather be home with their families.
In fact, the Party of No Strategy is responsible for a lot of things, none of which are good. In reading Sam Graham-Felsen’s piece in the Washington Post I discovered another one. Sam was a digital friend of mine in 2008. He arranged last-minute for me to attend Obama’s famous speech on race and he made sure I had press credentials for events in the Philly area. We were happy warriors from the inside and outside in the battle to make Barack Obama the president of the United States, and we were part of the bottom-up approach. That approach has been lost, and it’s lamentable. But, the truth is, the scorched earth Party of No Strategy made it impossible to reach any Republicans, to have any accommodation, or to move anything to the left of where it began. The GOP was impervious to lobbying or to any kind of normal self-preserving fear. We had picked the tree clean of vulnerable Republicans and they we’re more interested in discussing whether or not we wanted to pull the plug on grandma than on how best to reform Wall Street or our health care industry.
I have to credit the Republicans. Their strategy has worked for them very well. And it has frustrated Democrats and got them fighting among themselves. The public is frustrated and blames the party in power. But it is a dishonest and cynical strategy. And if you are a rank-and-file Republican, you should keep in mind two things. First, a party that lies all the time and is shamelessly hypocritical will not think twice about lying to you and breaking their promises. Second, if you start applauding dishonesty because it works, your character is going to suffer. You won’t be a good person for very long.