I think it is you who overestimate the ability of most Americans to think for themselves in the political arena. They know the government was shut down. How do they know? The media tells them. The same media tells them WHO shut it down. And when Obama vetoes bills in which there is nothing objectionable to him that can be found, the media will be hard pressed (though I am sure some will, but definitely not all) to put the blame on Congress.
No, it’s you how overestimates they’re interest in the whole thing in the first place. It’s not a matter of thinking for themselves, but if it is, they’d see that it was the Republicans who set things up for the shutdown. So, I’m right no matter what you assume.
Guess we’ll see who is right if this ever happens.
There was a very interesting article from TalkingPointsMemo about this - making the point that if Obama does this Executive Order, the Republicans will have to either fight hard to revoke it, or their 2016 presidential candidate is going to have to promise to revoke it. Doing either will hurt them more than it helps them.
Hooray for the government being able to do the wrong thing.
No, Republicans haven’t come up with a good plan yet. It’s obvious, because even Republicans haven’t decided on one plan: there’s at least three proposals out there and nobody has agreed which one is the “winner.”
First, none of this plan can be carried out until next year. Dems still control the Senate for another six weeks, and that means McConnell doesn’t get to set the agenda in that chamber.
Second, the idea that Congress will change hands in January and they will immediately start passing budget bills is far-fetched. If history is any guide, a new Congress takes a few months to get itself organized, meaning this debate would probably happen in March rather than January. After all, there’s going to be a lot of wrangling for who gets named as the Assistant Vice Chairman for the Permanent Select Under Committee for Kenyan Birth Certificate Investigations. Congress can’t do jack quickly, so a plan based on Congress acting quickly already has two strikes against it.
Finally, these bills can be filibustered in the Senate. The OP is just wrong about that.
No, they won’t be hard pressed. The strategy itself is described as a way to do an end-run around Obama (who admittedly is doing an end-run around Congress). The entire point is to play politics with unobjectionable aspects of the budget. If Obama refuses to let Repbulicans play politics with unobjectionable aspects of the budget, simply reporting that will be enough to show who’s playing politics with unobjectionable aspects of the budget.
Really, this is the same sort of magical thinking that got Republicans in trouble last time around with the shutdown.
So the strategy is “we don’t get what we want so we’ll hold our breath until you turn blue”. When you’re trying to dream up ways to shut the government down and your top priority is to try to place the blame on the president, you’ve got yourself a pretty good recipe for disaster. Go ahead, shut it down. Better yet, impeach the president.
Actually government has been funded by piecemeal spending measures for quite some time now. Since at least the mid-1970s there have been only a very few times in which a full budget was passed by the September 30 budget deadline. Only in 1977, 1989, 1995, and 1997 did a full budget get passed on time. All the rest is piecemeal.
You mean to govern like adults and pass reasonable immigration legislation? No, they will not.
They will act like petulant children, play semantic games to prevent action on an important issue, and focus entirely on how to deflect blame to someone else.
They won’t put the blame on Congress; they will put the blame on Republicans. See Left Hand of Dorkness’ post for an example of the kind of thinking involved.
If Congress tries to do an end run around the Presidency, it’s the Republicans’ fault. If Obama tries an end run around Congress, it is the Republicans’ fault. If Democrats are in the majority and the GOP doesn’t go along with whatever they want, it is the Republicans’ fault. If Democrats are in the minority and the GOP doesn’t go along with whatever they want, it is the Republicans’ fault.
Regards,
Shodan
Or, y’know, see the OP. It doesn’t take twisting or spinning to see the strategy when it’s laid out right there.
Actually, no. The filibuster cannot be used on budget resolutions.
Reconciliation.
The agency responsible for deportations is the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). If it is defunded and shut down, that means . . . no deportations. Obama wins.
I’m in general agreement with this, but I think it’s a bit more subtle and insidious than that. It’s not so much that the media directly blames the Republicans (though this too happens on the commentator side of things) but that the media portrayal reflects the Democratic perspective and narrative - and this is even on the reporting side of things.
In the prior shut-down fight, the Republicans were not technically shutting down the government. They had passed funding resolutions that kept the government open, but Obama refused to budge unless he got a “clean” funding resolution. Merely by adopting that term, and shifting discussion of the matter from funding resolution to “clean” funding resolution, the media reporting shaped public perception of the issue.
Similarly, if the Republicans House passes a bill that the Democrats in the Senate and White House have vowed to oppose, the House bill is treated as a PR gimmick. After all, the Democrats have said that they won’t budge on it. But if the Democrats in the Senate have passed a bill that the Republicans in the House have vowed to oppose, it’s not treated the same way at all - taken very seriously indeed and there is an enormous amount of focus on this bill and how the Republicans will deal with it. This puts pressure on the Republicans to cave, in a manner that Democrats don’t face, and ultimately shapes public perception (especially since, as others have noted, most people don’t follow the details all that closely) and becomes a sort-of self-fulfilling prophecy.
And this is the problem the Republicans will face in any stare-down of this sort. The Democrats will try to frame the issue in terms favorable to them, and the Republicans will try to frame the issue in terms favorable to them, and the media will buy into the Democrats’ version, thereby slanting public perception in favor of the Democrats even independent of any overt editorializing.
Where are they going to find time to pass all these appropriations bills between all the ceremonial votes to repeal Obamacare?
Obama didn’t have a chance to budge. These bills never got to his desk. The Senate took one, modified it, and sent it back to the House, and the House refused to allow a vote on it.
It was accurate to characterize it as Boehner’s shutdown, since only Boehner could allow the vote that would send a bill to the President.
This leaves plenty out about what happened. Further, when one party has the Presidency, that’s going to affect how the other party is covered. If the Republicans had the Presidency and the House, and it was only the Democratic Senate that was “standing in the way”, I’m pretty sure the media would cover it a bit differently.
“The media” includes vast swaths that are favorable to the Republicans, including Fox News, most of talk radio, and several major newspapers.
But the last shutdown was absolutely Boehner’s shutdown – they passed a bill, the Senate modified it, and Boehner refused to allow a vote on the modified bill. Obama was not involved at all until Boehner caved.
Actually the media* will explain to them that Obama vetoed this legislation because it did not fund important programs using an unprecedented legislative mechanism, and the public will therefore blame Congress.
The Republicans actually tried this during the last shutdown, in which they tried to get individual funding for parks etc. It got shot down by the Dems, and even though the Republicans tried to claim that it was the Dems who were shutting down the parks it didn’t work.
- except for Fox news which will hide this piece of information, but anyone who uses Fox as their primary information source is going to blame Obama no matter what.
It’s a reasonable strategy in principle that is nevertheless sure to fail in practice.
It is reasonable because it is entirely fair to tell the President that if he is going to use ICE money in a way Congress disagrees with, then they are going to de-fund ICE. That strikes me as quite different from saying that all funding for the government is contingent on some policy change, and certainly different from saying all funding for the government is contingent on not funding something that Congress has already passed into law–as in the past shutdown.
I don’t understand the byzantine rules for congressional funding legislation, but my understanding is that there are essentially two steps: one to set a budget, and another to actually appropriate money. It is my further understanding that the second step can indeed be filibustered. It’s not clear to me which step this is. I assume they have thought that through, but you never know with these guys.
More importantly, Republicans lose on optics whenever they try to use withholding funding for their policy ends. That’s just the preconception attached to that party. The Democrats also have negative preconceptions attached to them, of course. That’s just how it is. I don’t think it matters if they try to do this piecemeal or not. The majority of people will see it as games-playing and it will hurt them. It also doesn’t help that they’d be de-funding the agency responsible for immigration enforcement, which is obviously the opposite of their actual goal.
So I say two thumbs up for pursuing a principled strategy. But it probably won’t be good politics.
A principled strategy, you say? What principle is that? I’m not seeing any, just more obstructionism.