“House Freedom Caucus Demands”: Granting The Insurgents Continuing Power To Be Disruptive
It is looking likely that Rep. Paul Ryan will be elected Speaker of the House next week. Who knows what has transpired behind closed doors, but the word is that he and the Freedom Caucus reached a deal that won enough of them over for him to be elected.
What we also know is that the Freedom Caucus designed a questionnaire for speaker candidates. Kevin Quealy and Carl Hulse have done us all a service by translating those demands from Congressional legalese into plain English.
In looking at the list of 21 items, a lot of the things they are pushing for would simply undo the reforms instituted by Newt Gingrich that put power in the hands of the House Leadership – specifically the Speaker. In that way, they grant the insurgents continuing power to be disruptive.
But there are a few things that would mean pretty immediate chaos. For example, item 13 asks: are you willing to hold the debt limit hostage until we prevail on other issues? Specifically, the Freedom Caucus wants “structural entitlement reforms” in the 2016 budget and the Default Prevention Act (which President Obama has promised to veto) included in any legislation that raises the debt ceiling.
Given that the Treasury has informed Congress that the debt limit will be reached November 3rd – exactly one week after the House votes for a new Speaker – that doesn’t give Paul Ryan a lot of time to work this one out.
Making that job even harder is item 7 which seeks to institutionalize the so-called “Hastert Rule.” It would require that Republicans consider only legislation that has the support of the majority of their party. That would eliminate the possibility for Ryan to develop a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats to raise the debt ceiling.
If all that weren’t bad enough, item 15 demands that the new Speaker refuse to pass a budget that contains funding for Planned Parenthood, “unconditional amnesty,” the Iran deal and Obamacare. In other words…”We demand a government shutdown!”
There are several other interesting items, like a demand to impeach the IRS Commissioner, turn the highway program over to states, stick to the spending caps in sequestration, etc. But in a deliciously hypocritical move, item 6 demands that Republicans who signed the discharge petition to fund the Ex-Im Bank be punished, while items 4 & 5 demand that members who oppose rule changes and/or vote their conscience not be punished.
If Rep. Ryan has in any way agreed to these demands, things are going to blow up in the House very quickly. If he and the Freedom Caucus simply put off dealing with them, things are going to blow up in the House very quickly. Get my drift?
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, October 24, 2015
“Paul Ryan Is Doomed, Too”: He Will End Up In The Same Position As Boehner — Held Hostage By The Freedom Caucus
A week ago, Paul Ryan looked doomed. Now, he looks really, truly doomed.
The Wisconsin Republican, who achieved national prominence as Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012, seems more likely than ever to become the next speaker of the House. A devout man of faith, he will need your prayers.
When incumbent John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) announced his resignation, Ryan made clear he did not want the job. Who on earth would? Boehner spent his tenure trying — and failing — to corral ultra-conservative Republicans into a working majority.
GOP victories in the 2010 midterm elections had swept into office a group of nihilistic renegades who believe the way to change Washington is to blow it up.
Now calling themselves the Freedom Caucus, these 40 or so legislative bomb-throwers insisted on fighting battles they had no chance of winning and repeatedly took the country to the brink of calamity.
They threatened government shutdowns (and achieved one). They tried to block routine increases in the federal debt ceiling. They kept the House from passing spending bills in key areas, such as transportation, where there once was bipartisan agreement. They insisted on more than 50 useless attempts to repeal all or part of the Affordable Care Act, knowing these measures would fail in the Senate or be vetoed by President Obama.
As presumptive speaker, Ryan can look forward to more of the same.
Ryan is seen as the only figure who could potentially unite the fractious GOP caucus. As such, he has leverage — and he is trying his best to use it.
He insisted on having the support of all 247 Republicans before he would accept the job. But now he is reportedly willing to settle for less.
The Freedom Caucus announced Wednesday that a “supermajority” of its members would back Ryan. There was no official endorsement from the group, however, which means the unspecified majority fell short of 80 percent.
That doesn’t sound so bad — perhaps 10 or fewer unreconciled renegades, who theoretically could be marginalized. “I believe this is a positive step toward a unified Republican team,” Ryan said. But in courting the ultra-conservatives, he reportedly made concessions that seem to guarantee that the speaker’s gavel will be a symbol of misery, not of power.
The main problem is that Ryan is said to have promised to follow the “Hastert rule,” named for former speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), requiring that legislation have the support of a majority of the GOP caucus before it is brought to the House floor.
Boehner had to break the Hastert rule whenever ultra-conservatives threatened to bring about disaster — a potentially catastrophic default because the debt limit needed to be raised, for example. In those instances, Boehner got the legislation passed with a cobbled-together majority comprising Democrats and moderate Republicans.
To keep his job, Boehner generally kept to the Hastert rule on other, less critical legislation. This is what made the Congresses he led so spectacularly unproductive.
In 2013, the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Had Boehner brought the legislation to the floor of the House, it almost surely would have passed — but with the votes of Democrats and GOP moderates. A majority of the Republican caucus opposed comprehensive reform, so Boehner never allowed a vote on it.
Immigration, at least, is a hot-button issue; transportation is not. Yet Boehner could not even get a majority of his caucus to support a routine six-year transportation bill. This is the kind of legislation that used to be a simple matter of arithmetic and routinely passed with broad bipartisan support. For today’s House Republicans, however, fixing roads and bridges is somehow an ideological issue. Just about everything, in fact, is an ideological issue.
If Ryan does become speaker and respects the Hastert rule, he will end up in the same position as Boehner — held hostage by the Freedom Caucus. In his meeting with the group, moreover, he reportedly softened his demand to eliminate a House procedure in which any member can call for a vote to “vacate the chair,” or kick the speaker out of his job. And he also reportedly promised to devolve more power to the rank and file, which is precisely the opposite of what needs to happen.
If Ryan gets the job, he will likely enjoy a honeymoon period. But the fundamental problem — no functional GOP majority — will remain. Ryan believes government should be small. Much of his caucus believes it should be thwarted.
Sounds like doom to me.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, October 22, 2015
“Free Weekends Back In Wisconsin”: The Freedom Caucus’ Dilemma; Veto Ryan Or Surrender
According to the most authoritative account we have of what went down when House Republicans met last night, from WaPo’s Robert Costa and Mike DeBonis, Paul Ryan’s agreed to be Speaker if and only if an unprecedented array of “conditions” are met. Some involve his much-reported demands for free weekends back in Wisconsin and reduced fundraising duties. But the real challenge he’s posing is the requirement that the House Conference’s main ideological groupings all endorse him by Friday and essentially promise in advance that they will never threaten him with the kind of defenestration suffered by John Boehner and Kevin McCarthy. In fact, he’s proposing to remove the very lever that led to Boeher’s early departure: a mechanism whereby a majority of House members can at any moment remove a sitting Speaker.
So in effect Ryan’s telling the House Freedom Caucus, the only grouping likely to resist his takeover, that they have the power to veto him between now and Friday, but if they don’t they’d better put on the party harness.
What’s unclear is where Ryan is on the “procedural reforms” Freedom Caucus members keep talking about that would reduce the Speaker’s power to control what legislation comes to the floor and the sanctions that can be used to suppress dissent. They certainly cut against the consolidation of power Ryan clearly wants. But he did make one substantive concession to the ultras: he promised not to bring any comprehensive immigration reform bill to the House floor any time soon (presumably one like the Senate bill, that could be passed with Democratic votes).
In another account of developments in the House last night, National Review quoted Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) complaining at some length about Ryan’s conditions.
“The best thing I can assume is that he really doesn’t want the job,” he says. “You put forth a list of conditions that nobody is going to throw their weight behind, and force people to tell you ‘no,’ rather than the other way around . . . that’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”
If the Freedom Caucus does tell Ryan “no,” the assembled Republican Establishment and MSM commentariats are going to come down on them with thunderous condemnations. It will be fascinating to see if they seize their one avenue to a demonstration of power, or go quietly into probable irrelevance.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, Octoer 21, 2015
“We Have Become A Midterm Party”: RNC Chair; ‘We’re Cooked As A Party’ With 2016 Loss
Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus had hoped for a very different kind of 2016 election cycle. As we discussed a while back, the RNC chief intended to curtail the number of debates, front-load the nominating process, and effectively stack the deck in favor of established, electable candidates. Before the process even began, GOP lawmakers were also supposed to take lessons from the 2012 losses, pass immigration reform, and take steps to broaden the base.
The party, the argument went, would position itself for victory in 2016 by avoiding an embarrassing circus and steering clear of a madcap process that tarnished the party and its candidates alike.
The execution of Priebus’ plan has worked out quite differently, and when he sat down yesterday with the conservative Washington Examiner, he looked ahead to next fall.
…”I think that we have become, unfortunately, a midterm party that doesn’t lose and a presidential party that’s had a really hard time winning,” Priebus said. “We’re seeing more and more that if you don’t hold the White House, it’s very difficult to govern in this country – especially in Washington D.C.”
“So I think that – I do think that we’re cooked as a party for quite a while as a party if we don’t win in 2016. So I do think that it’s going to be hard to dig out of something like that,” Priebus told the Examiner.
It’s a fair assessment. Looking back over the last six presidential elections, Democrats have won the popular vote five times. If Dems expand that to a six-out-of-seven advantage, it will be that much more difficult for Republicans to characterize themselves as a national governing party.
What’s less clear is the practical implication of defeat. When Priebus imagines the Republican Party as “cooked … for quite a while,” I’m not entirely sure what he means in applied terms. Does the RNC chair think another defeat would be an impetus for dramatic intra-party change? Does he envision a splintering of the party in which right-wing members break off?
In the same interview, Priebus added that he doesn’t “anticipate” another rough cycle next year. “I think … history is on our side,” he told the Examiner.
As a factual matter, he’s entirely correct. Looking back over the post-WWII era, parties have nearly always struggled to hold onto the White House for three straight elections. Democrats do, in fact, go into 2016 facing historical headwinds.
But it’s nevertheless easy to imagine Dems prevailing anyway, leaving Republicans “cooked.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 16, 2015
“Republican Obstructionalism”: Why The Democratic Candidates Can’t Confront The Real Elephant In The Room
In last night’s Democratic debate, there was only one question, to Bernie Sanders, on what may be the most difficult challenge that will confront the next president if he or she is a Democrat: What are you going to do about Congress?
We’ll get to the answer Sanders gave in a moment, but first, some context. When Barack Obama was elected, congressional Republicans made what was in some ways a strategically shrewd decision, that they were going to oppose him on basically everything. Because he started with huge majorities in both houses of Congress, he had an extraordinary record of legislative achievement in his first two years, that opposition notwithstanding. But in 2010 Republicans won the House, and four years after that they took the Senate. For all intents and purposes, legislating was over.
In those two wave elections of 2010 and 2014, a generation of extremely conservative Republicans who viewed all compromise as betrayal were elected, moving the party to the right ideologically and making it far more obstructionist. Now let’s say a Democrat wins in 2016. What happens then?
It’s almost a certainty that Republicans will retain control of the House. Democrats have a chance to win back the Senate (Republicans have to defend many more seats, because everyone who won in 2010 is up for reelection), but even if they do, it certainly won’t be with a filibuster-proof majority. Not only that, if Democrats make gains, it will be in those few competitive states and House districts, which would mean that the remaining Republicans would as a group be even more conservative than they are now. Are they going to be in the mood to work with a Democratic president?
So here’s what Bernie Sanders said when he was asked about this problem:
“Now, in my view, the only way we can take on the right wing Republicans who are, by the way, I hope will not continue to control the Senate and the House when one of us is elected President. But the only way we can get things done is by having millions of people coming together. If we want free tuition at public colleges and universities, millions of young people are going to have to demand it, and give the Republicans an offer they can’t refuse.
“If we want to raise the minimum wage to $15 bucks an hour, workers are going to have to come together and look the Republicans in the eye, and say, “We know what’s going on. You vote against us, you are out of your job.”
In 2007, Mark Schmitt called the argument among Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards the “theory of change primary.” As Clinton would describe it in speeches, Edwards thought you demand change, Obama thought you hope for change, and she thought you work for change. Sanders’ theory, as he lays it out here, is essentially that you force change, by making it too politically dangerous for Republicans to resist.
Which is realistic in one way and unrealistic in another. On one hand, Sanders is not bothering to indulge the dream that you can reach across the aisle and bring Democrats and Republicans together. In fact, no candidate from either party is saying that — and after the last seven years, who could do so with a straight face? But that’s a dramatic change from the last couple of decades.
Though they all ended up inspiring partisan passions, our last three presidents all ran as conciliators who could unite Washington and the country. Bill Clinton was going to create a liberal/conservative synthesis, a “Third Way” that could attract support from both parties. George W. Bush touted his record working with Democrats in Texas. “I want to change the tone of Washington to one of civility and respect,” he said in his 2000 convention speech. Barack Obama, who became a national figure in a 2004 convention speech where he said, “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America,” thought that he could sit down with everyone, earnestly listen to their concerns, and bring them around at least some of the time. All three presidents failed at this goal.
But if Sanders is being realistic about the present, his portrait of his future presidency has a big problem, particularly in the House. Let’s say he succeeds in creating a mass movement behind parts of his agenda. Is he really going to be able to raise the political risk of opposing something like free public college tuition high enough to overcome House Republicans’ personal inclinations and their constituents’ wishes?
Imagine you’re a Republican representative who hails from a conservative district in Alabama or Idaho or Tennessee; we’ll call him Jim. Jim is right now stopping comprehensive immigration reform, which the GOP as a whole knows it needs to pass in order to have any chance of appealing to the growing Hispanic population. But Jim won’t sign on, because though that might be good for the party, it’s bad for him. His conservative constituents don’t want it, he personally doesn’t want it, and the only political risk he fears is a primary challenge from the right.
Is Jim really going to be scared and/or persuaded when a bunch of young people in America’s cities — even if there are millions of them — create a movement behind President Sanders’ plan for free college tuition? Don’t bet on it.
It should be noted that their obstructionism, and the demands it creates among their own constituents, may keep the GOP from winning the White House as long as it continues. But that’s not really a problem for Jim. Indeed, if they lose again, Jim and others like him will tell themselves that it was only because their nominee wasn’t conservative enough.
I’m talking about Sanders here because he’s the one who got that question last night, but I haven’t heard Clinton address this problem in a real way, either. And maybe there’s no good solution. I’m not sure how I’d tell them to answer it if I were advising them, at least not if they want to maintain the lofty, hopeful tone presidential candidates tend to use, where they present themselves as potent agents of change and renewal who can overcome any obstacle. No candidate is going to tell voters, “Here are the things I’d like to do, although, let’s be honest, I probably won’t be able to.” Even if it’s the truth.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line Blog, October 14, 2014
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