“Coming To A Head Very Soon”: Syria Isn’t The Only Crisis On Congress’ To-Do List
It seems like a long time ago, but as recently as mid-August there was a spirited fight within the Republican Party about the looming budget crisis. Far-right lawmakers wanted to use the threat of a government shutdown to pressure Democrats into defunding the federal health care system — an idea destined for failure — while party leaders balked.
U.S. policy in Syria quickly became the dominant issue on the political landscape, but in the back of our minds, there was an awkward realization: the budget fight had been pushed from the front page, but it hadn’t gone away. Indeed, folks stopped talking about this, but nothing had changed — GOP extremists still demanded a shutdown; the GOP mainstream still hated the idea.
This is coming to a head very soon, and the House Republican leadership has an idea on how to get themselves out of this mess. As Sahil Kapur reports, GOP leaders will make their pitch to the caucus today.
First, the House would pass a continuing resolution to continue funding the government at sequester levels, coupled with an amendment to defund Obamacare. When the package is sent to the Senate, it would be required to vote on the defunding measure first. If the Senate votes it down, and then passes the CR with Obamacare funding, it goes straight to President Barack Obama’s desk.
No confrontation. No attempt to force Democrats to back down. No need to go back to the House for a vote on a clean continuing resolution. But conservatives get a vote.
Just to clarify, there would be only one vote in the House — members would vote for the spending measure, with the anti-Obamacare measure tacked on as a sort of appendage. The Senate, meanwhile, would hold two votes — one to reject the House package, the other to approve the House package without the healthcare add-on.
In effect, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the rest of the leadership want to put on a little political theater in the hopes of making their far-right colleagues feel better about themselves. Everyone would know in advance that the Senate would reject the effort to defund the Affordable Care Act, but the plan allows for Republicans to cast this vote with the knowledge that they wouldn’t actually have to shut down the government.
It’s a win-win, right? Conservatives get to say they voted to “defund Obamacare”; Democrats would get to keep the government’s lights on; and GOP leaders would get to placate the radicals among them without any real adverse consequences.
At least, that’s the idea. The trouble comes when we take a closer look.
First, there’s a very real possibility that right-wing lawmakers won’t appreciate feeling patronized by their own leaders, and simply won’t accept the plan as a credible solution. Indeed, this isn’t just idle speculation: “Conservative Republicans who caught wind of the plan on Monday told The Hill it was unacceptable.”
These folks don’t want a symbolic, feel-good gesture; these folks actually want to force a budget crisis in the hopes of denying millions of Americans access to affordable health care. Republican leaders are afraid of the fallout of a government shutdown, but rank-and-file Republicans don’t give a darn.
And if House Republicans balk at their own leadership’s ploy, it means Boehner & Co. will find themselves dependent on House Democratic votes to avoid a shutdown. Do you think Dems might want a little something out of this deal to save the Speaker’s butt? Count on it.
Which then leads us to the second problem: under this approach, spending levels are still at sequestration levels. Why is that important? Because the sequester is a painfully stupid and destructive policy that’s hurting the country for no reason.
In August, Boehner said “none of us like” the sequestration policy. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the sequester “is not the best way to go about spending reductions.” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said the sequester is “unrealistic,” “ill-conceived,” and a policy that “must be brought to an end.”
And yet, the Speaker’s plan is to effectively tell the right, “You’re not getting the shutdown you wanted, but at least you’re getting the destructive sequestration cuts we pretend not to like.”
There’s a real chance that rank-and-file Republicans oppose the idea because they want to shut down the government, while rank-and-file Democrats balk because they hate the sequester.
All of this will have to be dealt with fairly soon, since the government runs out of money on Sept. 30. Once that’s done, we then get to move on to congressional Republicans threatening to crash the global economy on purpose with another debt-ceiling hostage crisis.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 10, 2013
“If The President Is For It”: After White House Briefing And Asking No Questions, John Cornyn’s Convenient Change Of Heart
In March Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) appeared at an event in Atlanta, and publicly endorsed U.S. intervention in Syria. Then President Obama expressed support for military strikes in Syria, at which point Cornyn reconsidered.
Indeed, in a curious twist, the Texas Republican said this week “many questions are still left unanswered,” which led to a meeting with the president in the White House in which Cornyn asked no questions.
All of which leads us to now.
A Cornyn aide said Thursday that the senator currently opposes the Syria resolution, which will be debated on the Senate floor next week.
“If the vote were held today, Sen. Cornyn would vote no,” said Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Cornyn.
The immediate significance of this is that Cornyn is the first leading congressional Republican to express opposition to authorizing the use of force. In the House, the top two GOP leaders — House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor — endorsed the resolution earlier this week, while in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is too afraid to say much of anything.
But it’s the larger context of announcements like these that stand out.
Kevin Drum had a gem on this yesterday.
There’s obviously a bit of hypocrisy on both sides in this affair, but I have to say that watching Republican pols and conservative pundits get on their high horses about Syria has been pretty nauseating. These are guys who mostly have never met a war they didn’t like, and until a few months ago were practically baying at the moon to demand that President Obama stop diddling around and get serious about aiding the rebels and taking out the monstrous Bashar al-Assad. But now? Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths as they talk piously about the value of multilateral support; the need to give diplomacy a chance; the perils of regional blowback; the lessons of Iraq; and the fear of escalation if Assad retaliates. You’d think they’d all just returned from a Save the Whales conference in Marin County.
There are some Republicans who are perfectly serious about their desire not to get entangled in yet another Middle Eastern conflict. But most of them couldn’t care less. Obama is for it, so they’re against it. It’s pretty hard to take.
Bill Kristol published an interesting item this morning, urging his party follow the president’s lead on Syria. “The fact is that Obama is the only president we have,” Kristol wrote. “We can’t abdicate our position in the world for the next three years. So Republicans will have to resist the temptation to weaken him when the cost is weakening the country. A party that for at least two generations has held high the banner of American leadership and strength should not cast a vote that obviously risks a damaging erosion of this country’s stature and credibility abroad.”
Now, as a skeptic of U.S. intervention, I’m not at all convinced that restraint in Syria will “weaken the country.” But what’s interesting to me is that Kristol seems to believe congressional Republicans, en masse, can separate their political instincts from their foreign policy worldview.
In recent days, it’s been made abundantly clear that they cannot. Putting aside the merits (or lack thereof) of intervention, most congressional Republicans appear to be approaching this debate the same way they approach every debate — as post-policy partisans who define themselves by their objections to a president they hold in contempt for reasons that are generally incoherent.
By: Steve Benen, The Madow Blog, September 6, 2013
“Heads I Win, Tails You Lose”: On Syria, Republicans Once Again Are Playing “A Rigged Sports Game”
“I am going to support the president’s call for action,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said on Tuesday, in reference to U.S. policy in Syria. “I believe my colleagues should support this call for action.”
In the 48 hours that followed, most of Boehner’s colleagues from his own party — which is to say, the members he ostensibly leads — announced their intention to ignore the Speaker’s suggestion.
By some measures, this might raise doubts about Boehner’s leadership abilities. The Speaker’s office doesn’t see it that way.
Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) office reiterated Friday that it’s President Obama’s responsibility to sway the public on the need to strike Syria and warned that lawmakers will represent their constituents.
“The speaker has consistently said the president has an obligation to make his case for intervention directly to the American people,” said Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck. “Members of Congress represent the views of their constituents, and only a president can convince the public that military action is required.”
Let’s put aside, for now, the notion that members of Congress represent the views of their constituents — an assertion that doesn’t seem to apply to how Republicans approach immigration, gun violence, taxes, job creation, entitlements, civil rights, health care, or education.
Instead, let’s try to fully appreciate the rules as they’ve been laid out for the political establishment, because it seems as if the last few days have been devoted to the political establishment and the chattering class planting some goalposts pretty deep.
If congressional Republicans ignore President Obama, it’s evidence of Obama failing. If congressional Republicans ignore their own party’s leaders, it’s still evidence of Obama failing.
If the president bypasses Congress to pursue his national security strategy, he’s dictatorial. If he seeks congressional authorization for his national security strategy, he’s weak and undermining the stature of his office.
If lawmakers reject a resolution authorizing force in Syria, Obama will struggle to get anything through Congress for the rest of his term. If lawmakers approve a resolution authorizing force in Syria, Obama will struggle to get anything through Congress for the rest of his term.
If the president uses the military to intervene in Syria, Obama will have undermined the credibility of the United States on the global stage. If the president honors a congressional vote against using the military to intervene in Syria, Obama will have undermined the credibility of the United States on the global stage.
I’m starting to think this game is rigged in a heads-I-win; tails-you-lose sort of way.
For what it’s worth, while the ultimate outcome on Capitol Hill is in doubt, I’m not at all convinced this is a make-or-break moment for Obama’s presidency, and he might as well resign if the votes for his Syria policy don’t materialize. Greg Sargent had a compelling piece on the larger context this morning:
If Congress says No, and Obama announces that he will abide by the vote — arguing that the people have spoken, that democracy and the rule of law will prevail, and that our country will be stronger for it — then it’s very possible that the Dem base will rally behind him…. If Obama heeds Congress, the liberal base — and liberal lawmakers — would likely have Obama’s back. Independents, who have tilted strongly against an attack, might be supportive, too.
And so, several questions for the political science egghead types and anyone else who cares to answer. Do voters really perceive situations like these in the same terms pundits and Congressional lawmakers do, i.e., in terms of what they tell us about presidential strength or weakness? Do voters really expect presidents to bend Congress to their will, or do they see Congress as its own animal and don’t hold presidents accountable for its behavior?
I imagine for many political observers, it’s easy to think of political “wins” and “losses” in a sports context — victories are inherently good and defeats are inherently bad. And if the president goes to Congress seeking authorization for a military strike in Syria, and lawmakers reject the appeal, it would be, by definition, a loss for the president.
But it might simultaneously be a win for democracy that leaves the public with the outcome the American mainstream wants. Voters may well react to news organizations obsessing over “Crushing Presidential Defeat on Capitol Hill,” but I’m not convinced the public would reflexively see it that way.
If Congress balks and the White House honors the vote, most Americans would be pleased, not outraged, right?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 6, 2013
“A Whole New Concept”: On Syria, Congressional Republicans Are Put Into The Position Of Actually Having To Govern
By seeking congressional approval for military action against the Syrian government, President Obama has accomplished something that the nation hasn’t seen in some time: He’s compelled Republicans to divert their attention from their concocted crises to an issue of actual substance.
As the August recess unfolded, Republicans — including a number of prospective presidential candidates — contemplated whether to shut down the government as a protest of Obamacare and whether to refuse to honor the nation’s debt as a cri de coeur against Obamacare or the deficit or Obama himself or perhaps modernity in general. These issues were debated at length, if never quite in depth, on right-wing talk radio and Web sites. That nobody but the hard-core Republican right seemed stirred by shuttering the government and defaulting on the debt mattered not at all.
If the American right increasingly seems to occupy an alternative planet, that’s largely because its media outlets — we can throw Fox News into the mix — dwell on stories so exquisitely calibrated to excite the right that they may not be stories at all. The New Black Panther Party? The Epidemic of Voter Fraud? The calculated perfidy of Benghazi? The impeachable crime of Obamacare (a socialist scam actually modeled on a proposal from a conservative think tank 20 years ago)? It’s not the editorials and opinionating of right-wing broadcasters and journalists that are driving the right into fantasyland. It’s the tales they spin into stories and the time and space they devote to events that never actually happened or that they surreally misconstrue.
By throwing the Syrian conundrum to Congress, Obama has at least confronted Republicans with a real-world choice. Since Saturday, the drumbeat for closing down the government has been muted in its usual haunts.
That’s why the coming collision of libertarian fantasies with reality will be instructive. Can a congressman vote to defund the government and approve a military action in the same month? Or vote to authorize cruise missile attacks while insisting the government default on its debts? All these issues will soon come before Congress in rapid succession.
The U.S. government has obligations to the American people even more fundamental than seeking to stop the use of chemical weapons that are killing innocents in a foreign land. It provides pensions to the elderly, health coverage to the old and the poor, and, in a few months, it will help Americans without health insurance buy private coverage. It has obligations that conservative opposition has kept it from meeting — among them, repairing and modernizing the nation’s infrastructure and creating the jobs (say, by repairing the infrastructure) that the nation’s private-sector employers are unable or unwilling to create.
Conservatives routinely disparage such basic government functions. But even right-wing media have to acknowledge the legitimacy of government when employing the armed forces is at issue. Whether it is wise or prudent to employ those forces is always the most legitimate of questions. Whether the nation should halt such actions, or the payment of its pensions and health-care obligations, because the government should stop functioning altogether until Obamacare or Obama or modernity just go away is not.
In theory, House Speaker John Boehner, who has spent decades in government, does not support its abolition. In practice, he has been cowed by his party’s libertarian right and by the increasing dissolution of other strains of Republicanism, which is why he has occasionally threatened both closure and default. As the share of Americans who support and identify with Republicans shrinks in the polls, the faithful who remain have taken on the aspects of a cult — secure in the knowledge of “facts” that aren’t facts, passionate about causes whose very existence bewilders their compatriots, determined to punish any believers who stray from the fold.
Now Syria has popped the balloon of their insular summer. Right-wing Republicans may decide not to authorize a strike because they want to embarrass the president, but even they must know that there’s more at stake than their war on Obama: life and death; the future of a crumbling country and a volatile region; our own security as well as U.S. credibility. There may even be more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in what passes for their philosophy.
By: Harold Meyerson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 3, 2013
“A Tragic Waste Of Time”: In The Budget Fight, The GOP Doesn’t Act In The National Interest
Are we really going to do this? Are we going to wade into a struggle we don’t really want to fight? Are we going to mire ourselves in a senseless, grinding conflict whose possible outcomes range from bad to worse?
I’m talking about the upcoming budget battles in Washington, of course. (What, you thought I meant something else?)
Incredibly, Congress seems determined to spend much of the fall demonstrating its boundless talent for dysfunction. House Republicans say they will threaten once again to send the nation into default — and the economy over a cliff — by refusing to raise the federal debt ceiling, now set at $16.7 trillion. This means that by mid-October, the government would exhaust its borrowing authority and be left without enough money to pay its bills.
“The president doesn’t think this is fair, thinks I’m being difficult to deal with,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said last week at an Idaho fundraiser. “But I’ll say this: It may be unfair, but what I’m trying to do here is to leverage the political process to produce more change than what it would produce if left to its own devices. We’re going to have a whale of a fight.”
In other words, Boehner is looking forward to the opportunity to threaten the nation with grievous harm. Nice little economic recovery you’re working on. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.
President Obama, who has seen this movie before, says there will be no fight because he categorically refuses to negotiate over the debt ceiling. He demands that Congress do its job — which amounts to a routine bit of bookkeeping — without all the needless drama.
Investors around the world still consider U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds to be the ultimate safe haven, especially in times of economic uncertainty. It is unthinkable that our elected officials, supposedly working in the nation’s best interests, would threaten this exalted and immensely beneficial status by intentionally triggering a default.
So who’s going to blink?
Obama certainly has the stronger political position. His approval numbers may be stuck in the 40s, but ratings for Congress are down in the teens — and sinking.
Boehner has almost no room to maneuver. House Republicans are still fuming at having been forced to swallow a modest tax increase for the wealthy as part of the “fiscal cliff” deal earlier this year. The responsible thing would be for Boehner to bring a simple bill raising the debt ceiling to the floor, where it would pass with the votes of Democrats and non-crazy Republicans. But that would probably cost Boehner his job.
You’re depressed already? I’m just getting started.
Before we even get to the debt-ceiling fight, the government will run out of authority to spend money on Sept. 30 — which means no ability to function — unless Congress approves a continuing resolution. Doing so should be another no-brainer, but some Republicans are itching for a government shutdown. Because, you know, that worked so well for Newt Gingrich in the ’90s.
Boehner wants none of that. But in an attempt to get House Republicans to avert a shutdown by passing a short-term funding bill, he promises them a “whale of a fight” later over the debt ceiling. (He treats his caucus as if it were a cage full of rabid wolverines.)
Oh, and there’s another whole dimension to the pointless political snarling and bickering we will have to endure over the next few months: Obamacare.
Some Republicans believe, or say they believe, that they can use the continuing-resolution fight or the debt-ceiling fight, or maybe both, to force Obama to sign legislation nullifying all or part of his health-care reforms. One idea is to take away Obamacare’s funding. Another is to delay the individual health insurance mandate, due to take effect next year.
Do they really believe the president is willing to forsake his most important legislative accomplishment? Before it even comes fully into effect?
This is a tragic waste of time and effort, and the House Republicans are to blame. Remember when Democrats captured the House in 2006? They worked with George W. Bush even though they disagreed with his policies. Most Democrats adamantly opposed the Iraq War, but then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi made sure that Bush got the funding he required for the troops.
Boehner and his crew need to act like grown ups. If they don’t, voters need to send them home.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 2, 2013
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