“Cliven Bundy Is No Hero”: Republicans Are Mistaking The Angry Nevada Debtor For A States’ Rights Crusader
It’s no surprise that Republicans are jumping on Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s bandwagon. They’re desperate for any issue that will help them push propaganda designed to attract votes.
Some are painting the Bundy rebellion as a states’ rights issue. It’s not. The federal government isn’t threatening people’s freedoms nor Nevada’s sovereignty. Nevada isn’t fighting the Bureau of Land Management to reclaim the land. Bundy got himself in hot water because he refused to pay his $1 million grazing bill.
It’s not like Bundy didn’t know that the bureau was going to his confiscate his cattle. His dispute with them is 20 years old. He had plenty of opportunities to pursue legal action. The government never denied him due process.
A law abiding citizen would have respectfully paid his debt, but Bundy believes he’s special and that the rules don’t apply to him. He didn’t like the outcome, so he resorted to terrorist tactics, organizing a 1,000 person, gun posse to threaten federal agents and make his point.
Bundy won applause from Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and Republican Sen. Dean Heller. Fox News host Sean Hannity hailed him as a capitalist hero, and conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said he’d make a good politician. Florida Republican House candidate Joshua Black said President Obama should be arrested and hung for treason. Texas Senate candidate Chris Mapp said ranchers should be allowed to shoot on sight anyone illegally crossing the border on their land.
This talk is politically useful. It plays on conservatives’ distrust of government. The Pew Center for People and the Press found that 65 percent of Democrats have a favorable view of the government, but only 23 percent of Republicans think the same.
The party admires Bundy, but they have shown no such sentiment when it comes to ranchers fighting against the Keystone XL pipeline. Randy Thompson and hundreds of other Nebraskan have been resisting TransCanada’s efforts to lease their property. The GOP isn’t hailing them as champions of property rights. They’re silent because these ranchers are fighting against their big money, big business supporters.
Conservatives would be better off seeing this issue for what it is: an angry debtor who pulled out his gun because he didn’t like the fact that he had to pay up. They won’t be better off believing the GOP means what it says.
By: Jamie Chandler, U. S. News and World Report, April 16, 2014
“And Here We Go Again”: Republicans Are Really, Really Bad At Hostage Negotiations
For some time, I’ve been arguing that we should not just extend the debt ceiling but get rid of it altogether. It’s a weird historical anomaly that serves no practical purpose other than allowing the opposition party, should it be sufficiently reckless, to threaten global economic catastrophe if it doesn’t get its way. I assumed that your average Washington Democrat would share this view, but now I’m beginning to think that if you’re someone like Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama, the debt ceiling is actually quite helpful, and you’d be sorry to see it go.
Because here’s what keeps happening: The debt ceiling approaches. Republicans begin making threats to torpedo the country’s economy by not raising it, and thereby sending the United States government into default, if their demands aren’t met. We then have a couple of weeks of debate, disagreement, and hand-wringing. Republican infighting grows more intense, and their reputation as a bunch of radicals who are willing to burn down the country to serve their extreme ideology is reinforced. At the end of it, the Republicans cave, the ceiling is raised for some period, and we do it all again in a few months.
And here we go again. The debt ceiling is going to have to be raised in the next month or so. Since the deficit is now at its lowest point since Barack Obama took office, it’s hard for Republicans to say that slashing the budget is so urgent that it justifies threatening to send America off an economic cliff. So what will they demand as their price for assenting to a debt ceiling increase? The answer is…they can’t decide. Yesterday, the House leadership proposed that they demand either a repeal of the “risk corridor” provision in the Affordable Care Act, which protects against a “death spiral” in the individual insurance market (here’s a good explainer on that), or approval of the Keystone pipeline. As Jonathan Chait pointed out, “Republicans have decided that one of these policy demands is so vital that they can insist its fulfillment justifies the threat of global economic calamity. They’re just not sure yet which one.” But it turned out that they couldn’t even unite around one of those two things, and that proposal of the leadership’s is now dead.
So here’s where we are. The Republican position is that something or other, let’s call it the Policy Change To Be Named Later, is so urgent, so pressing, so essential to the future of this great nation that if they don’t get it, whatever it turns out to be, they will force the government into default. And as soon as they figure out what the PCTBNL is, they’ll let us know.
Meanwhile, the Democrats’ position is simple: the debt ceiling needs to be raised, without conditions. Period. And that’s just what’s going to happen. There’ll be some hemming and hawing between now and then, but Democrats are going to win this, and Republicans are going to lose, and look like fools. Given that, if you were Barack Obama, wouldn’t you be perfectly happy to go through this routine a few more times?
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, February 5, 2014
“Don’t Even Give Them A Fig Leaf”: Democrats Should Call The GOP’s Debt Ceiling Bluff
“We don’t want ‘nothing’ out of this debt limit,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in December.
With a deadline to raise the debt ceiling approaching this Friday (though Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has said he can manage until the end of February), House Republicans are indeed talking about what they’d like in exchange for upping the nation’s borrowing limit. However, their internal talks aren’t going so well.
The GOP’s two leading ideas for handling the debt ceiling — tying it to a provision mandating the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, or one tweaking ObamaCare — fell apart Wednesday due to a lack of Republican support. Both would have included a one-year extension of the debt ceiling.
More from The Washington Post’s Robert Costa:
Both ideas were debated at a conference meeting and members expected the conference to coalesce around one of the plans by later this week.
That playbook soon fizzled, however, once GOP leadership aides fanned out throughout the Capitol to take the temperature of members about the plans. Instead of finding growing support, they found unease and complaints, with myriad concerns raised by the House’s right flank. [Washington Post]
Sound familiar?
It should. Republicans folded twice last year on their debt ceiling demands after realizing that threats to plunge the nation into potential financial chaos aren’t too popular with voters.
Just a few months ago, Republicans entered the debt ceiling and government funding talks with a fantastical list of demands. The ask rapidly shrank, though, when Democrats refused to budge. Yet House leadership, fearful of angering the party’s right wing, refused to give in either.
The plan backfired, and Republicans came away with nothing except historically low poll numbers:
For Republicans to think they have any more leverage now is just delusional.
President Obama has insisted that Congress send him a clean debt ceiling bill, meaning one free of any extraneous provisions. Public opinion is on his side. A recent CNN survey found that 54 percent of Americans would blame the GOP if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. Only 29 percent would blame Obama.
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) reportedly has a Plan B in the works that would swap the debt ceiling hike for the restoration of some military benefits. Yet there is no guarantee the plan could overcome the objections on the right, since it would technically raise spending, something anathema to Tea Partiers. And even if it were to somehow get the support of a majority of the GOP caucus, House Democrats reaffirmed Wednesday that they wouldn’t bargain, period.
The whole standoff is reminiscent of Rep. Marlin Stutzman’s (R-Ind.) oblivious remark about the debt ceiling standoff back in October: “We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.” Republicans want something, anything, in exchange for a debt ceiling vote, but they can’t even settle on what that something might be.
The bottom line is that since Republicans caved in the past, there’s no reason to believe they won’t cave again. Boehner himself admitted earlier this week that “there’s no sense picking a fight we can’t win.”
The GOP can’t win. Democrats should call that bluff and not even give them a fig leaf.
By: Jon Terbush, The Week, February 6, 2014
“Holding A Blank Ransom Note”: GOP Had A Plan On the Debt Ceiling, But Now Have Absolutely No Idea What To Do Next
Last spring, House Republican efforts to hold the debt ceiling hostage quickly became a fiasco – Democrats refused to play along and Congress passed a clean increase. Last October, House GOP efforts to hold the debt ceiling hostage were arguably even worse – the debacle coincided with a humiliating shutdown, and ended with another clean increase.
Despite this recent history, Republican lawmakers once again said they expected some kind of major policy concession or they would once again push the nation towards a default. Say hello to Debacle #3.
House Republican leaders are at a loss on how to move a debt limit increase.
A GOP leadership aide told CQ Roll Call that after an informal canvas of the House Republican Conference through member meetings and phone calls over the past week, leaders concluded that the top two sweeteners could not attract enough Republican support to pass a debt ceiling hike.
Going into this week, House Republicans had narrowed their scope: they would refuse to pay the nation’s bills unless Democrats gave them either (a) the Keystone XL pipeline and its 50 permanent jobs; or (b) the elimination of risk corridors in the Affordable Care Act, which would add $8 billion to the deficit and risk higher premiums on consumers.
In reality, it was highly unlikely the GOP would get either concession – Democrats don’t see the need to pay a ransom if the hostage takers are bluffing – but Republicans seemed certain they’d seek one concession or the other.
That is, until today, when House GOP leaders suddenly realized that rank-and-file House Republicans aren’t on board with either idea. And since these measures apparently don’t have 218 GOP votes, Republicans would need Democratic support to pull off their own hostage crisis, which isn’t going to happen.
So where does this leave the House of Representatives three weeks before Congress needs to act on the debt limit? Lost and directionless.
A leadership aide told Roll Call, “We are mulling other options and trying to figure out the best way forward on this.”
Or put another way, “We had a plan, but now have absolutely no idea what to do next.”
It’s not too tough to predict how this will play out.
That left Republican leaders with no clear alternative to addressing the debt limit, which the Treasury Department has said needs to be raised by the end of February.
Instead, it now appears that a combination of Republicans and Democrats will be needed to get a debt-limit boost through the House.
And that means a clean debt-ceiling increase, which was the inevitable outcome in the first place.
The lingering question isn’t why GOP leaders are struggling in this fight; it’s why GOP leaders agreed to launch this fight knowing in advance they’d lose.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 5, 2014
“The Devil’s Christmas Tree”: It’s Still A Long Ride On The Crazy Train
Expect to hear a great deal of cheerleading for a government shutdown from unusual quarters today. That’s because House Speaker John Boehner is now beginning to implement his earlier and much-puzzling-to-rational-people strategy of shifting Republican hostage-taking from efforts to keep the federal government operating to a debt limit bill due at the very latest by October 17.
Why is he doing this? You have to assume that Boehner is mesmerized by polling showing a debt default is more popular than a government shutdown–polling that is, of course, based on broad public incomprehension of the implications of a debt default.
Because (a) the president’s position after the dispiriting debt limit impasse of 2011 is that he will not negotiate over the debt limit, and because (b) congressional Democrats support that position, often with implicit or explicit “Hell No!” amendment, Boehner needs a debt limit bill that can pass the House with Republican votes only. And so his bill, as it is developing, is a right-wing Devil’s Christmas Tree, or to use a more secular metaphor, an evil child’s wish list for Santa. The generally very calm and very articulate Ezra Klein is almost at a loss for words in describing it:
The House GOP’s debt limit bill — obtained by the National Review — isn’t a serious governing document. It’s not even a plausible opening bid. It’s a cry for help.
In return for a one-year suspension of the debt ceiling, House Republicans are demanding a yearlong delay of Obamacare, Rep. Paul Ryan’s tax reform plan, the Keystone XL pipeline, more offshore oil drilling, more drilling on federally protected lands, rewriting of ash coal regulations, a suspension of the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate carbon emissions, more power over the regulatory process in general, reform of the federal employee retirement program, an overhaul of the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, more power over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s budget, repeal of the Social Services Block Grant, more means-testing in Medicare, repeal of the Public Health trust fund, and more.
[T]his is really the [Republican] conference teaching Boehner a lesson. He had so little support to raise the debt ceiling at all — and so little trust from his members that he had a strategy to maximize their leverage — that this is the bill he had to present. At this point, Boehner either can’t stop them, or he’s too exhausted to try.
I suppose the other interpretation is that Boehner intends to eventually patch together something less psychotropic that can be passed with mostly Democratic votes (he has, after all, publicly and repeatedly said he won’t let the country default on its debts), and/or that business community pressure will be brought in like a deus ex machina to pull Republicans back from the brink. In that case, I suppose, there’s no reason to say no to any House Republican demand (though the leadership did, it is being reported, turn down including a late-term abortion ban similar to the one the House passed earlier this year).
It’s also possible, theoretically, that Boehner and company wanted to shock Democrats and the MSM with the consequences of his party’s impending defeat on appropriations in order to force some sort of compromise on measures designed to avoid a shutdown. But at this point, Republicans will find it increasingly difficult to accept any deal that doesn’t disable Obamacare, now that Boehner has embraced the idea that a one-year implementation delay is a “reasonable” alternative to “defunding” it. And that’s a non-starter for Democrats, even if they do prove willing to directly or indirectly violate constant pledges not to consider a debt limit bill with conditions.
So that gets back to why a lot of folk will soon be begging John Boehner to put aside his little do-it-yourself atomic bomb assembly kit and go back to threatening the conventional warfare of a government shutdown. TNR’s Noam Scheiber is already there:
[O]ne of two things is probably going to happen if we avoid a shutdown: Either John Boehner is going to turn around and appease irate conservatives by insisting on delaying Obamacare in exchange for raising the debt limit, thereby sending the government into default (since Obama isn’t negotiating). Or he’s going to back down and allow the debt ceiling to be raised with a minority of House Republicans and a majority of House Democrats, thereby further infuriating conservatives and almost certainly costing himself his job. (Recall that conservatives got more than halfway to the number of defections they needed to oust Boehner back in January, after he’d merely allowed a vote on a small tax increase when a much bigger one was kicking in automatically.) That is, either Boehner gets it or the global economy gets it, both of which Boehner would like to avoid even more than he’d like to avoid a shutdown.
If Boehner resigns himself to a shutdown, on the other hand, suddenly the future looks manageable. After a few days of punishing political abuse, Boehner will be able to appear before his caucus, shrug his shoulders in his distinctive Boehnerian way, and bleat that he executed the strategy conservatives demanded, but that the country is overwhelmingly opposed to it, as are most Senate Republicans and almost every semi-legitimate right-wing pundit and media outlet
That’s just great. I suppose begging John Boehner to be somewhat less destructive is a preferable alternative to caving to his demands. But it still involves a long ride on the crazy train in order to reach the engineer with a request to please turn around.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, September 26, 2013
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