It would have to be in two separate bills. That way, the CR could be adopted first, and then the device tax bill could be debated pro forma before passage, thus side-stepping what would otherwise be a fatal breach in the vital principle “no concessions to or negotiations with hostage-takers”.
An understood linkage between the two could be discussed behind closed doors, but never in a way that allows it to be publicly invoked or used as political precedent.
I’m sorry, where have you been? When have the House Republicans and the President agreed on really any budgetary changes without the threat of either a looming debt ceiling or alternatively an automatic tax increase for all hanging over our heads (since 2010)? The initial Super Committee/sequestration legislation happened because of a debt ceiling. Neither side got what we wanted, but we negotiated and the GOP got some spending cuts while the President got some of what he wanted.
In the face of automatic tax increases, the President used that to his advantage, crowing that he was “getting his tax increases” regardless. Boehner eventually came to a deal with him where some taxes went up, but less than would have otherwise gone up.
Neither of these negotiations resulted in one group controlling all of government. But none of those negotiations would have happened outside of some impending “crisis.” The President does not need the House of Representatives day to day. So they only have any leverage over him when either previous legislation is hitting some terminal point where new legislation must be passed, or where previous legislation is causing something unpleasant to happen (like large automatic tax increases.) When exactly can the GOP expect to negotiate with the White House, that needs little to nothing from the House day to day, except when they need something?
You’re basically arguing that I should mow my neighbors lawn with the understanding that we’ll negotiate a price for my services after the lawn is mowed. Once the lawn has been mowed, I cannot unmow it, and thus the neighbor has no reason not to bend me over in our negotiation–if he even deigns to negotiate at all.
Too complicated for you?
The executive is not entitled to money. He can only spend money that has been budgeted and appropriated by the legislature. Constitution 101, thanks.
More like the President and the Senate, need to recognize that alone they cannot create a budget. The House members have a responsibility to do what they believe their constituents want them to do. This doesn’t mean what the most recent national Gallup poll says, this means what they, in their opinion of their local constituencies believe their constituents want. If they are doing something those constituents actually do not want, that can be rectified in 2014, but until then they were selected by their fellow citizens to make these decisions.
Yes, it is expected that we keep government running and the lights on, but it is also expected that you represent the ideals you expressed in your campaign and the larger goals of your party which are in the minds of voters who elected you. That means we should both negotiate with the Democrats in the Senate and the President, but with an eye to getting at least some of the things we think our constituents want. Key to that is spending reductions and moving closer to a balanced budget (I’d also like to see more moderate revenue increases but I suspect I’m in a minority of Republican constituents who want that.)
Throughout the reign of Charles II he had a lengthy disagreement with Parliament and they approved no new taxes. The King in that time had access to certain alternatives sources of funding, duties collected on ships and things of that nature that he could tap aside from ordinary taxation approved by Parliament. Charles ran the government like that for years, it wasn’t ideal, but it’s what he did.
I suspect the Founders, educated British subjects, knew full well of this historical fact from only a hundred or so years prior. They knew that was a distinct possibility of fully vesting the power of the purse in the hands of the legislature. That if the legislature and the executive could not agree, the government could be defunded. They did not include any constitutional requirement that the Congress passes a budget, which means they specifically allowed for the legislature to defund the government.
They probably hoped it would not happen, but this conflict is exactly what they intended–that the legislature could use the power of the purse to make the executive bend knee. The Constitution makes the legislature the most powerful branch of government on paper, the reason it is not as a matter of fact is historically it has been too fractured to reign Presidents to heel.
This is exactly how things work. I don’t much care for our system of government. I’d love a Westminster system where the head of the legislature is the head of government and these problems are impossibilities.
The Republicans did not shutdown the government before (for Obama, anyway). And there have been several bills that have passed, since and before, with a Republican House and Democratic Senate. Shutting down the government (which was the Republicans’ plan), and threatening default (as if NOT defaulting is a “compromise” position) is a new tactic- and it must not be allowed. The negotiations before happened without these tactics.
There’s the negotiation- the tax cut was going to end, but they agreed on a compromise that was somewhere in the middle. No shutdown and no threat of default.
No past “crisis” involved one party planning and executing a government shutdown, and subsequently threatening debt default. Many past bills were negotiated without shutdown and threat, and compromises were reached. This is new.
In this metaphor, you and your neighbor share the lawn and have mowed it together… but his dog wandered over and got stuck in your garage, and you’re refusing to give it back unless he agrees that part of his lawn never gets mowed again by your shared efforts. It’s reasonable for him to refuse, and your tactic of holding his dog hostage is unreasonable.
It’s a stupid metaphor anyway, but this doesn’t even need a metaphor. The Republicans planned the shutdown, and are celebrating it! They wanted the shutdown. They changed the game with a new, illegitimate tactic. And if it succeeds, then the Republicans can stop funding every program they don’t like- no more Social Security, no more Medicare, no more Dept of Education… all while holding only half of the Legislative branch. That’s not reasonable.
And more than that- this tactic is bad for the Republican party. They are losing badly in the court of public opinion- this is a lose-lose scenario. The Democrats will not and cannot give in, so the Republicans can either look bad or tank the economy.
Maybe. I’ve never claimed to be a genius; I just do the best with what I got. Then again I’ve learned over the years that if I am not understanding something then a lot of other people also are not.
I am not trying to argue with you over the reality or accuracy of your position; honestly just trying to understand what it actually is. And honestly you are not making it easy to understand.
So if I have it right, you believe that every Representative should do whatever they believe their local constiuents want them to do, and if they have lost the votes by other means and the only way to fight for that is to shut down the government or even explode the economy in an attempt to force others to give more to the way they believe their local consituents want things to be then they should do that. That should be done by every group that can do so on every issue as an ethical obligation to their constituents.
I get that you “don’t much care for our system of government” … I’m sort of fond of it myself. But really your love or distaste for our system is not at issue.
Continuing, I am not clear if you actually think that this approach should be taken for every issue that representatives feel is how their constiuents want things to be that they have otherwise lost on by other means … or only for some extreme circumstance in which they must “make the executive [and the other Congressional body] bend knee.”
You further explaining would be appreciated.
Thank you.
Martin Hyde, you’re saying that just because one party controls two out of the three segments of the government, they shouldn’t get everything they want. This is reasonable. But you also seem to be arguing that if a party controls just one out of those three, that they then should get everything they want. This makes no sense at all.
And no, Congress does not have a responsibility to give the President exactly the budget he wants. But they do have a responsibility to give him a budget at all. That’s part of their job description. Even if it’s not the budget that the President wants, it still has to exist.
Martin’s also looking past the fact that there is a budget CR that, if voted on right now, would be passed by both houses and signed by the President- the clean CR. It’s pretty easy to blame Boehner when there’s a bill (already passed by the Senate) that would pass in the House, if only he’d allow a vote.
Chronos, a perhaps pedantic point - it really is 1 1/2 of 3 segments of government, with the other party controlling 1/2 of one and the other one (the Supremes, or more accurately, the Judicial Branch) putatively being independent although widely percieved to be currently more aligned with the latter’s interests.
The point of the pedantry being that there are systems in place to prevent tyranny of the majority while respecting that “elections have consequences.” What we do not apparently have so well is a system that prevents this sort of tyranny of the minority.
Republican shutdown drinking game: 2 shots for everytime a Repub says “Obamacare is not ready for Primetime”.
Heard an interesting point on the radio just a bit ago … the Cruz showboating putatively intending to defund or destroy Obamacare did more to publicize it and get people aware that the marketplaces are now live than anything Obama could have done on his own. No way they would have gotten the kind of traffic they’ve already gotten if not for this level of extra publicity. And of course it did not defund it. The point that person on the radio made was cogent: Cruz et al are only caring about narrowcasting to those who elect them in their districts, preaching to their choir, but in the process they broadcast to everyone else and do more to entrench Obamacare than if they had kept their mouths shut.
Like a Streisand Effect on steroids.
DSeid, I left the Supreme Court out of the analysis for two reasons. First, while the current Court does sympathize more with the right than with the left, they’re not so far gone as to attempt to sabotage everything associated with the other side, like Congress is (as evidenced, for instance, by the fact that they upheld most of the PPACA). Second, they have yet to get involved at all in the current boondoggle.
The House voted to pay Government workers for their time on furlough, once the shutdown is over. The Senate still needs to vote on it and the President needs to sign it, but it’s assumed that will happen without a problem. I think the vote was unanimous, which is a bit of a surprise.
It sounds like DOD Secretary Hagel has come up with a plan to recall most of his furloughed workers, citing that they work to support the military. We may be able to get back to work early next week if he can get away with it. Apparently it’s a legal opinion and lawyers had to get involved. I don’t know if that helps or hurts Obama’s or the Republicans’ stance.
The GOP is also reported to be floating a plan to fund the government for 6 weeks (or to the end of the year) and raise the debt ceiling. A committee would then be set up to negotiate the fiscal issues dividing the party. Right, that went so well the last time.
Your continuing willful misrepresentation of facts along with your efforts to ignore presentations that contradict your narrative are frustrating to read. You are actually, it appears, making an effort to be intransigent, much like the House GOP appears to be making an effort to be intransigent.
If that isn’t your intent, you are failing miserably at whatever your intent is.
Is the house being able to not put forth any budget a bug or a feature? The current class in the house seems more willing to say fuck it all to shit but hasn’t this always been an option if they were really true believers? I don’t think it’s hostage taking or illegitimate to exercise powers lawfully available. Shitty tactic that should be punished at the ballot box sure, but it seems certainly within their toolbox.
And I put them in because they are in, as a balance that is there that reduces the risk of tyrnanny of the majority. And this is the case whether they are actively involved in a current boondoggle or not. Failing to include them also gives the impression that our tripartite system is the Senate, the House, and the Executive branch, each with equal weight. Such is not the case. The Executive branch is one part and the Senate and the House are each one half of one part. Right now the Democratic side controls 1.5 parts to 0.5 part controlled by the GOP and of that 0.5, the House, only 80 of its 435 members, about a third of the 233 Republican members, are controlling the show. And demanding “compromise” or else they’ll kill us all.
They represent 18% of the US population and they do not get their way by driving the car into oncoming traffic and asking the rest of us “to compromise.” I voted for Gore along with a majority of Americans. Sour grapes accusations by some of my side aside my side still lost. We did not get to demand a compromise and have half of of what we wanted even though a bit more than half of Americans wanted Gore over Bush. We lost and elections have consequences. We lost 100%. No compromise was due us. The Presidency was 100% GOP. I wasn’t happy about it but too damn bad for me.
This 18% of the population, this fraction of one half of one third of the three branches of our government, also has to deal with the facts. Everyone they know, in their mostly White Christian rural districts, thinks like they do and voted overwhelmingly against Obama. But they lost and they do not deserve to get 18% of what they want, or 1/6th based on the amount of branches they control, or even 1/4th if you want to ignore the Judicial. Bringing down the country, playing these stupid ass games that accomplish nothing, cannot be tolerated by the rest of us, including the rest of the GOP that actually care more about the good of this country than about destroying Obamacare. You know, the real patriots, not doofuses who may use the word but “don’t much care for our system of government.” These are people whose loyalty to their party is that they’d rather have no GOP than a GOP that does not march lockstep with them and behave in a manner that shows they feel the same way about the country as a whole.
Me, I love this country and I think our system is, these warts and all, the best one possible. These cretins who apparently only love a country that goes exactly the way they want it to go, who are in love with an imagined nostalgia of a country that once was but who hate America as it is and where it is going, who have the gall to claim they are patriotic, deserve to be tarred and feathered and then run out of Washington on a rail. Metaphorically of course.
Doubt the shutdown will end like that though. More’s the pity.
Well said,** DSeid.**
That acknowledged, politics played responsibly is still statecraft, not a partisan game of winners get everything on their wish list and losers can suck it. A President is President of the entire country, and a Speaker is Speaker of the entire House, not of just their own parties - to operate as if they were is destructive, against the concept of “a republic, if you can keep it”. Even individual members need to remember they represent the country they swore their oath to, not just their district residents or their financial patrons.
The minority does not become irrelevant and dismissible just because they’re the minority. But a faction can make itself irrelevant and dismissible through irresponsible conduct, by engaging in tantrums instead of statecraft, insisting on getting everything they want no matter what elections show the people they represent want done. The proper response to someone throwing a tantrum is to ignore it until it runs out of steam.
In this case, the Republicans (let’s not blame the teabaggers, since the entire fucking party is doing it) are demanding simply that the program they hate, because it includes the name of the man they hate who is getting credit for it, be vandalized in any way possible. That’s a tantrum. They need to lose their steam and accept that they have lost, and lost because they’re wrong. The right approach for the Responsibility Party to take is to let that happen, clean up the damage afterward, and not to appease the children. It’s damn sad for our democracy that it’s come to that, but it has.
I agree 100% regrading the entire Republican Party being at fault.
I find it amusing that some in the press have spun the GOP’s position as a party being driven by a vocal and intransigent minority into committing political suicide. The fact is this is a party strategy; the GOP moderates are either cowards or enablers, and either way they don’t deserve a free pass until some of them actually start doing something about the American Taliban in their own party.
As I suggested in my first post in the thread, it looks like this will end with short term bills. That really wasn’t much of a prediction though, short term legislation was the only way the President could negotiate without looking like a fool, and it’s the only mechanism the House has to guarantee the Democrats negotiate once they pass the legislation.
It’s out that Boehner will be discussing a six week debt limit increase when he goes to the White House today, we’ll see if that includes a CR for government funding and if it’s “clean” for those six weeks.