While it is true that the Democrats’ willingness to pass a clean continuing resolution at sequester levels of funding constitutes a significant concession, I do have to wonder if it is quite the victory for the Republicans as many imagine:
The only leverage the GOP has is the sequester, which Democrats clearly dislike more than Republicans. But that leverage only helps Republicans get Obama to the bargaining table on a longer-term fiscal deal, where the sequester could presumably be replaced by other cuts and revenue increases. The sequester doesn’t give the GOP any leverage in the CR or debt limit fight, since neither passing a CR nor raising the debt limit would in itself do anything to alleviate the sequester. (In fact, Democrats have already accepted the sequester level of government funding in the CR. Raising the funding level would mean the GOP is making concessions, not receiving them.)
Yes, the Republicans have an overarching desire to reduce the level of federal spending, but that doesn’t mean that there are no equities that they have in the federal budget. For example, the original idea behind the sequester was that the Republicans would find the defense cuts intolerable. While that didn’t turn out to be the case, that doesn’t mean that the issue simply went away. For defense hawks like Sen. John McCain and Rep. Buck McKeon, continuing to fund the Pentagon at sequester levels is the same kind of defeat that liberals feel when kids are turned away from Head Start and people can’t get affordable home mortgages. The idea that there are no Republicans who are interested in increasing funding in any area of the government is not true, and to the extent that they are willing to pretend it is true, it really does represent the dawning of new era of nihilism.
After all, the sequester is simply a blunt force instrument, a sledgehammer, that reduces spending equally across the board, with the result that Congress completely abdicates any responsibility for setting priorities. A party that subscribes to the sequester as a victory is basically saying that it believes in cutting but it doesn’t believe in priorities. It is the same thing as simply giving up on guiding the federal government. It takes away all the discretionary power of congresspeople. It also takes away a large degree of lobbyists’ incentive to give money to Congress. There are still tweaks to the law to pursue, but without funding on the table, the only thing to discuss is tax and regulatory relief. Governing by sequester makes Congress less relevant.
We should consider the Republicans’ leverage in this context. How long do their lawmakers want to go on cementing and celebrating their own irrelevancy? Budgetary nihilism in the pursuit of a deal is one thing, but as an ongoing governing philosophy, it is something else entirely.
For now, the Republicans like the sequester not because it is satisfactory in any real sense but because it allows them to avoid spelling out their priorities to the American people. The reason that they have refused to convene a conference committee to hammer out a budget is specifically because they are terrified of spelling out their priorities and they don’t want to make any concessions.
Logically, that argues for a Grand Bargain, where responsibility for their unpopular cuts can be broadly shared with the Democrats in Congress and the administration, but the Republicans have rejected the Grand Bargain avenue, as well. Noam Scheiber thinks that they will reach for the Grand Bargain now, as a fig leaf to disguise their retreat. That may be so, but they won’t like the idea now any better than they did in 2011. They can agree on cuts, but that is all they can agree on. As a party, cutting has become their only priority.