Republicans Are Stuck On Shutdowns
Photo by Leo Leung, CC BY 2.0
It’s that time again. It’s the end of the fiscal year and Republicans, after a hiatus from being fiscal hawks during the Trump Administration, are once again engaging in budgetary brinksmanship.
This year, the shutdown is estimated to take place if no deal is reached by September 30. Twelve appropriations bills have to be passed to fund the government for the new fiscal year. At last count, House Republicans have only passed one of the necessary bills.
As an alternative, Congress could also pass a continuing resolution to kick the can down the road. This would keep spending at current levels and give Congress a few more weeks or months to agree to a new budget. The problem is that more than a dozen Republicans oppose a continuing resolution.
To be fair, not all Republicans are part of the problem here. The real problem is the House Freedom Caucus and other assorted extremist Republicans. The Freedom Caucus is pushing Speaker McCarthy to load appropriations bills with Republican wish lists, which makes the bills promptly go down to defeat.
The math is that Republicans have a nine-vote majority in the House and a minority in the Senate. When McCarthy tees up a partisan bill, it loses both Democrats as well as some moderate Republicans.
As Axios reported this week, some Freedom Caucus members voted against a defense appropriations bill even though it contained restrictions on abortion, transgender medical procedures, and affirmative action in the military. The members cited concerns about their ultimate position in budget negotiations with the Biden Administration as well as the fact that the bill was rushed to a vote.
“They’re throwing one bill out that they’ve plussed up, and we don’t even know what the top-line numbers for the entire package” are, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said. “They should be holding stuff back until we all know what the top line is.”
Some Republicans are more concerned about keeping the government open, however. In Politico, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.). “I lived through a government shutdown as an FBI agent. If I can testify that it impacts national security in a very direct way. Your cases will get shut down, because there’s a gap in coverage on an investigation. That’s my perspective of shutdowns, why I hate them.”
Active-duty military personnel would suffer along with law enforcement. Stars and Stripes notes that troops like my son in the Air Force would stay on the job during a government shutdown but would not be paid until the the two parties brokered a deal to fund the budget.
Other Republicans point out that shutting the government down would be self-defeating.
“I think the governing majority, which is presiding at the time the government shuts down, probably is going to bear a lot of the blame,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) told Politico. “And we’re the ones with the gavel… it’s our job to run the government.”
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) was more succinct.
“We always get the blame,” Simpson said. “Name one time that we’ve shut the government down and we haven’t got the blame.”
And that’s true. The one possible exception that I can think of was the 2018 shutdown, but Republicans still edged out Democrats in taking the blame then as well.
Shutdowns have long been popular with the Republican base, but they are a particularly dumb strategy. In Congress, votes are what matter and, if a party doesn’t have the votes to pass its priorities before a shutdown, shutting the government down won’t change that.
The irrationality of the shutdown strategy can be illustrated by South Park’s Underpants Gnomes. The gnomes have a three-step plan for wealth that starts with stealing underpants and ends in “profit.” The flaw in the plan is that they haven’t figured out the critical intermediate step.
It’s the same with the shutdown proponents. The budget cutters have some bargaining power leading up to a shutdown because avoiding an interruption is in everyone’s interest. But their position is limited because the other side realizes that once the shutdown starts, the positions reverse.
Shutting the government down doesn’t win over opposition votes. Rather, the shutdown gnomes need votes from the other party to reopen the government. With the shutdown gnomes getting hammered by public opinion as Social Security checks run late and soldiers don’t get paid, the other side isn’t too anxious to let the shutdown gnomes off the hook and tries to extract their own concessions.
Shutting the government down is also a self-defeating strategy for budget hawks because shutting the government down is more expensive than keeping it open. In addition to the fact that the government is usually fully funded retroactively when it reopens, there are economic costs associated with delays in doing business during the shutdown.
I’m also concerned about out-of-control government spending, but a government shutdown is not the way to negotiate cuts. Republicans should force what cuts they can while passing the necessary appropriations bills, but the bills or a continuing resolution should be passed.
Rep. Womack was correct in that the whole episode is an exhibition of Republican dysfunction. Republicans have the majority in the House, which controls the purse strings of government, but divisions between their own members are grinding the government to a halt. This is not good governance.
The situation also shows Speaker McCarthy’s weakness. As I wrote last week when the House opened an impeachment inquiry, the Speaker is beholden to the totally unreasonable “kamikaze caucus.” Those same Republicans have McCarthy trapped in the budget impasse.
The House won’t pass the right-wing bills, which is bringing the country toward a financial crisis, but McCarthy can’t tack left to pick up Democrat votes without losing the speakership. Guess which is more important to him.
I don’t know whether the two sides will hammer out a deal before the deadline, but I do know that the Republicans will ultimately give in. They’ll have to. Basic math dictates the ultimate outcome of the budget battle.
The only alternative is for the Freedom Caucus to force a default and crash the entire economy. Hopefully, they aren’t that delusional. However bad government overspending is, a federal default would be worse.
The shutdown debate is nothing more than an exercise in political theater which gives publicity-seeking congressmen a chance to preen for the cameras. The spending problem is not going to be resolved by debating discretionary spending when the real problem is entitlements, and no one is even pretending that entitlement reform is on the table.
I can at least be optimistic that this time it seems that the shutdown gnomes are a minority. In past shutdowns, there was a spirit of defiance among Republicans that I don’t see this time. I haven’t even seen a single Republican screaming “Shut it down” online. This time, the troublemakers seem to be a mere handful rather than the majority of the party as we saw in Ted Cruz’s ill-conceived “Defund Obamacare” shutdown in 2014.
Maybe Republicans are learning not to listen to the most shrill and extreme voices of their caucus. One can hope.
As you might guess, I have many thoughts:
– In nearly 22 years as a fed I have yet to see regular order appropriations. CRs for weeks to months, and shutdowns. I have joked that if I ever do it will be my signal to retire.
– The GOP has spent 40 years yelling that government should be run like a business. I know of no business that intentionally prevents itself from spending revenue (which is what a lapse in appropriations is) to force a couple of its business units to agree on a course of action for the next year. It just reinforces the idea that the GOP doesn’t want to govern.
– In the OP’s realm – air traffic controllers and weather service forecasters will still be working without pay 1 October and there after. among many others. Talk about a morale killer.
– As Congressional staff can’t work during a furlough, the Freedom caucus is sticking it to their own staff. To prove nothing and change nothing. Let that sink in.Report
I mean its not like McCarthy has control:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/21/politics/house-government-shutdown-negotiations-latest/index.htmlReport
Good thoughts in general David. A couple of my own.
-The media’s nonsensical media alignment (which is distinct from conservative or, a very small number of, liberal leaning media institutions and encompasses most major media that aren’t in the GOP Prada wheelhouse) is on especially glaring display when they talk about this. If McCarthy were to schedule a vote for the Senate bills that are on offer (which adhere to the framework the GOP, including McCarthy, previously agreed to during the debt limit showdown) then the budget would pass easily with all Democratic congressfolk and a handful of Republican ones voting for it. McCarthy has the votes, the only dysfunction is in that the GOP has its own internal rules that prevent him from scheduling one. The media acts like this is some kind of fact of political nature rather than a very specific choice the GOP has made. As usual with one unlovable but typical centrist liberal party and one deranged zombie rump party the media is utterly desperate to cast the two as, somehow, equivalent or near parity when it is nowhere near the case.
-I’m assuming McCarthy’s plan of play is to drive the shutdown into a ditch and suffer it until the livid elderly right-wing voters stop getting their SS checks and force the wingnuts into backing down. Presumably he then gets to remain Speaker and will then turn his attention to, somehow, persuading the electorate that his posse of idiots should remain in charge of the house majority. Has there been a more pitiful and venal Speaker in recent history? Paul Ryan at least believed in -something- (even if it was just gutting safety nets and lavishing money on plutocrats) and Boehner actually got some things done.
-As usual the iron rule of institutions is hard at work. What is good for the wing nuts is bad for both the GOP as a whole, Conservativism as a whole and the country.Report
(a useful thing to remember in the discussion of the 2018-2019 shutdown is that Trump got the money.)Report
he got it by moving it against Congressional appropriations direction.Report
Yeah, and? They shut down the government to stop him getting it, and yet he got it, which means the government shutdown was just a big waste of everybody’s time.Report
As they always are . . . . This one will be too . . . .Report
As I recall, they didn’t shut down DoD, and the movement of appropriated money was all inside DoD, and was at least nominally within the statutes on emergency transfers. After an afternoon going through the thing, I remember that my reaction was, “Wait. There’s still someone in the Trump administration that understands how to play the game?”Report
Here in California back in the 90s, the Republicans also used to force shutdowns on a recurring basis, in some cases ending with state employees getting IOUs instead of checks.
Once the Republicans were banished from power and Democrats assumed a supermajority, the budget is passed like clockwork every year.Report
McCarthy has lost control:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/21/politics/house-government-shutdown-negotiations-latest/index.htmlReport
It looks like CNN pulled that last sentence of opinion from the article.Report
That’s what you consider most important about this story?
Fascinating.Report
It was the most interesting comment I could think of. I’m always interested in retractions and edits, and when an outfit like CNN realizes it’s doing too much editorializing that does catch my eye.
As for the rest of the story, yeah, it’s not really news that McCarthy doesn’t have control of the House, or that some Republicans are dissatisfied with the Defense budget.Report
They didn’t pass a defense appropriation. Unlike the other three furloughs I’ve been in as a fed. That means come Sunday the only people reporting to duty at the pentagon or elsewhere will be in uniform. No civilians running the PX or BX – or doing any of the thousand and one other things they do to support war fighters. That’s unprecedented best I can tell – and hurts a generally conservative political constituency.Report
It was the most interesting comment I could think of.
I’ll take your word for it.Report
Here is my thoughts on a shutdown:
Everyone goes home.
No, seriously, Biden should make it clear in the event of a shutdown, everyone just goes home.
Because this is nonsense. It’s actually _illegal_ for private businesses to demand people work without pay, or even _request_ they work without pay. And it’s completely absurd our government has decided it can do it…I know they are not subject to that law, but we have a fundamental agreement in this country that people cannot be asked to work for free to keep a job.
So we can’t do that. Government stops paying people, everyone stops working. I’d be willing to allow the absolute minimum of constitutional positions to remain filled, like Congress and the President which also would allow the government to undo this, but EVERYONE ELSE goes home.
Everyone. Air traffic controllers. Federal marshals and judges. Guards at Federal prisons. (After letting the prisoners out, can’t leave them there with no guards.) The entire US military. US Navy, feel free to abandon ships in place…try to shut down any nuclear reactors first, I guess.
EVERYONE. It’s over, shut it down as safely but quickly as you can, and go home.
We choose not to pay government employees, congratulations, we cannot ask them to continue to work for us, period.
It is utterly absurd we even have this as a concept.Report
All too often in our political system, we decide to _work with_ lunatics who are trying to blow everything up and attempt to find way to soften the blow where everything doesn’t blow up. They get to hold an explosive while we desperately attempt to figure out a way that the explosion won’t take out as many people, attempting to set up barricades and evacuate people and negotiate with the hostage takers.
No.
We need to look them in the face and say ‘Yeah, go ahead and do that. Set off that bomb in here with all these people. Blow yourself up. See what happens. See if that’s what the American people want.’
It’s the same with the debt ceiling…don’t find a way around it, just say ‘Okay, well, if we aren’t making any more money, and we constitutionally have to pay all debts, debts we cannot afford, the very first thing is to stop incurring _new_ debts. So, I guess I’m immediately firing all people who are not currently employed paying existing debts. I guess the entire US military is getting fired.”Report