Smart people understand that Ted Cruz’s antics are working against the Republicans by allowing Harry Reid to delay the passage of a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government to the very last moment, leaving John Boehner with a take-it-or-leave-it dilemma. But there is also a potential downside to letting everything go to the last minute. If the House Republicans are smart and somewhat restrained, they could approve the Senate’s CR but attach approval of the Keystone XL pipeline to it and force the Senate into a take-it-or-leave-it situation. There are enough pro-energy Democrats, like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Tim Johnson of South Dakota, that such a provision could pass the Senate. And then the president would be in the position of having to veto the CR and allow a government shutdown or acceding to the Keystone demand and cutting the State Department’s deliberative process off at the knees.
The president might not mind a brief government shutdown that is unambiguously the Republicans’ responsibility and that is understood to be about their opposition to the Affordable Care Act. He’d be much less happy with a shutdown that is understood to be about his refusal to approve the Keystone pipeline.
But I said that the Republicans would have to be restrained in order for this plan to work. If they limited their demands to the pipeline, they might be able to jam up the president. But the rumors that have been circulating have said that they want to attach the Keystone demand to the debt ceiling, and that they want Medicare and tax reforms as part of the package. Boehner is fishing for votes, and the Keystone provision may be insufficient, by itself, to get Boehner the majority he needs. In any case, he’d have to attach it to the CR, not the debt ceiling, in order for this gambit to work.
Still, it’s something to be mindful of as we come down to the wire.
