Part of understanding the dynamics of the government shutdown and debt ceiling crisis, is the acknowledgement of the fact that we are here because of a deliberate strategic decision that the Republicans took early in the year. They demanded that the Democratically-led Senate pass a budget resolution. When the Senate was successful in doing that, the ordinary course would have been for the House and Senate to appoint conferees to hash out the differences between their two respective budget resolutions. But the Republicans refused to appoint any conferees because they said the two parties were too far apart on their numbers to make a compromise possible. In reality, they didn’t want to spell out the cuts their draconian budget would make necessary. Instead, they wanted to force the administration to spell out those unpopular cuts by forcing a crisis that they felt the White House would feel compelled to avoid at all costs. Therefore, the plan all along was to refuse to agree to any budget numbers and use the end of the fiscal year on September 30th, and the need to raise the debt ceiling shortly thereafter, to win cuts they could not get in any other way. And this would allow them to blur the lines of responsibility for the unpopularity of the resulting budget.
In simple terms, this strategy depends on the Republicans being so immensely irresponsible that the administration would feel compelled to give in to avoid the damage they would cause to the country.
As Jonathan Chait explains, the administration believes that they cannot allow this kind of strategy to succeed on any level because it will perpetuate completely irresponsible behavior. The point is not that the administration is opposed to any particular demands that the Republicans are making. They are opposed to making any kind of concessions on principle.
But the bigger problem here is that conservatives are not acknowledging the Democrats’ belief. It’s not a pose. They genuinely think, regardless of the merits of the ransom demand, they can’t give in, both for the national long-term interest and on moral principle. Conservatives are acting like the problem here is that they asked for a bit too much to begin with, and want to start haggling down the price. The price isn’t the issue. If the conservative goal is to create the illusion of winning something for the debt ceiling, then they’ll come back next time to win more, and Democrats can’t allow that.
Congress needs to get back to passing budgets and marking up appropriations bills. Governing by arbitrary sequester levels, constant omnibus continuing resolutions, and debt-ceiling extortion schemes is more than dysfunctional. It distorts the separation of powers and hands way too much influence to the party in the minority. It cannot continue. And the only way to stop it is to deny the Republicans even a symbolic victory in the current impasse.
Defeating these tactics now will enable the president to have a productive second term, and that is why offering something face-saving to the Republicans would be counterproductive. They not only need to lose, but they need to learn their lesson.
